Sirach — Chapter 25
Concord, Age, and Household Discord
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Hebrew–Greek comparison and notes · III. Wisdom
25:1 In three things I was adorned and stood beautiful before the Lord and human beings: harmony among brothers, friendship among neighbors, and a wife and husband living agreeably with one another.
25:2 But my soul hated three kinds, and I was greatly offended at their life: a proud poor person, a rich liar, and an old adulterer deficient in understanding.
25:3 You have not gathered in youth; how could you find anything in your old age?
25:4 How fitting is judgment for gray hair, and knowledge of counsel for elders!
25:5 How fitting is wisdom for the old, and thought and counsel for the honored!
25:6 Long experience is the crown of the old, and their boast is the fear of the Lord.
25:7 Nine things I considered happy in my heart, and the tenth I will speak with my tongue: a person rejoicing in children, one who lives to see his enemies’ fall;
25:8 happy is the one who lives with an understanding wife, who has not slipped with his tongue, and who has not served someone unworthy of him;
25:9 happy is the one who has found prudence and the one who speaks into listening ears.
25:10 How great is the one who has found wisdom! Yet he is not above the one who fears the Lord.
25:11 The fear of the Lord has surpassed everything; to whom will the one who holds it fast be compared?
25:13 Any wound, but not a wound of the heart; any evil, but not a woman’s evil;
25:14 any calamity, but not a calamity from those who hate; any retribution, but not the retribution of enemies.
25:15 There is no head beyond a snake’s head, and no anger beyond an enemy’s anger.
25:16 I would choose to live with a lion and a dragon rather than live with an evil woman.
25:17 A woman’s evil changes her appearance and darkens her face like a bear.
25:18 Her husband will recline among his neighbors and involuntarily groan bitterly.
25:19 Every evil is small beside a woman’s evil; may a sinner’s lot fall upon her.
25:20 A sandy ascent under an old person’s feet—so is a talkative wife to a quiet husband.
25:21 Do not fall for a woman’s beauty, and do not long for a woman.
25:22 Wrath, shamelessness, and great shame result if a wife supplies her husband.
25:23 An evil wife is a humbled heart, a gloomy face, and a wound of the heart; one who does not make her husband happy is slack hands and paralyzed knees.
25:24 From a woman came the beginning of sin, and because of her we all die.
25:25 Do not give water an outlet, or an evil wife freedom of speech.
25:26 If she does not walk according to your direction, cut her off from your flesh.
Source and editorial notes
Working translation preserved from the recovered manuscript of 8 September 2026. Declared source: Septuaginta, Rahlfs–Hanhart, 2006, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, publisher’s Greek main text. Independent linguistic and critical-apparatus review remains outstanding. Source-access and reception claims in the inherited notes have not been freshly revalidated. Chapter and section headings are editorial.
The translator’s prologue is separate from the 51 chapters. Its eight source units map to publisher labels 1, 1a–1g; main-text 1:1 maps to 1h. Source 5:15 includes material often numbered 6:1, so chapter 6 begins at 6:2. Source label gaps are preserved; no text is invented.
25:1 The speaking I is grammatically feminine in Greek, suggesting personified wisdom; no speaker’s name is inserted.
25:3 The gathered object is unexpressed; the following verses concern wisdom and judgment.
25:7 The announced nine and tenth are preserved without forcing a new enumeration onto the following clauses.
25:11 The next printed label is 13; label 12 is absent.
25:13 The force is an emphatic preference among hardships; the strongly gendered wording is retained as the author’s statement.
25:15 Head follows actual κεφαλή, whose connection with a snake’s harmful power is left in the image; it is not silently changed to venom.
25:16 Dragon renders δράκων, which can designate a great serpent.
25:19 The imprecation is preserved as an ancient textual statement, not directed at any present person.
25:22 The source’s ancient economic and gender expectation is retained; no modern rule about spouses’ employment is inserted.
25:23 Both sets of bodily images are retained.
25:24 Woman and the causal statement are explicit. Eve is not named in the Greek verse, and no further account of inherited guilt is added.
25:26 The flesh-separation image is retained in its marital setting; it is not converted into a new procedural instruction concerning physical injury.