Christ in Sirach

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God Poured Out

This chapter speaks of a wisdom that was with God before all time, that came forth in the Holy Spirit, and that God poured out upon His works and gave to those who love Him. The New Testament takes up this very music and sings it of Christ. Paul calls Him "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), and says that God made Him "unto us wisdom" (1 Corinthians 1:30). In Him, Colossians tells us, "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossian…

Christ Connection - The One Who Was Tried and the Mercy That Came

This chapter promises that no one who hoped in the Lord was ever put to shame, that the faithful are refined in the furnace, and that God is compassionate and merciful to all who seek Him in truth. Each of these finds its fullness in Christ. He is the One who was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15), who endured His own furnace of humiliation and came through it proven and glorified, so that the refining this chapter describes is no longer…

Christ Connection - The One Who Was Great and Made Himself Lowest

Sirach 3 sets two great virtues side by side, the humility owed to God and the mercy owed to the needy, and both find their fullest form in Jesus. The chapter says, "The greater thou art, the more humble thyself in all things." No one was ever greater, and no one ever stooped lower: He who was in the form of God "made himself of no reputation," took the form of a servant, and humbled Himself even to death (Philippians 2:6-8), so that the One who is honoured by the humble w…

Christ Connection - The One Who Became Poor for Us

This passage asks us to become a father to the fatherless and a defender of the wronged, and it promises that the one who does so is received as a beloved son of the Most High. Both halves meet in Christ. He came to "preach the gospel to the poor... to set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18), bowing His ear cheerfully to the very people this chapter names. Paul writes that "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might b…

Christ Connection - The Door Held Open, and the One Who Is the Door

This chapter pleads, "Delay not to be converted to the Lord," and names the patience of God as the open window that makes turning possible. The whole of it leans toward Christ. In Him the patience of God took on a face: He came eating with sinners, telling of a father who runs to meet the son who finally turns home, and crying out, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" (Matthew 11:28). The "patient rewarder" of Sirach is the Lord who "is longsuffering to u…

Christ Connection - The Friend Who Lays Down His Life

Sirach praises the faithful friend as a strong defence, a treasure beyond gold, the medicine of life and immortality, the one who abides in the day of distress. Every line of that praise finds its fullness in Christ. He turned to His disciples and said, "I have called you friends" (John 15:15), and then defined the height of such love: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Where Sirach says the false friend will no…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God Who Came to Serve

Sirach 7 calls the reader to love God with all his strength, to honor the lowly servant as his own soul, to stretch out his hand to the poor, to comfort those who weep and visit the sick, and to live always with the end in view. Each of these finds its fullness in Jesus. When asked for the greatest commandment, He answered with the very words this chapter reaches toward: love the Lord "with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" (Matthew 22:37). He wh…

Christ Connection - The One Who Did Not Despise the Penitent

This passage forbids despising the one who turns from sin, and grounds the command in our shared need of mercy. In Jesus that grace took flesh. He let a sinful woman wash His feet while the host despised her, and said, "her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much" (Luke 7:47). He told of a father who saw his returning son "yet a great way off" and ran to him, refusing to reproach him with the years he had wasted (Luke 15:20). And against every instinct to re…

Christ Connection - The One Who Cleanses the Inner Life

Sirach 9 stands guard at the eyes and the heart because it knows that is where a life is won or lost. The whole chapter assumes a truth Jesus would state directly: the things that defile a person "come forth from the heart" (Matthew 15:18-19), so it is the heart that must be kept and, where it is already stained, made clean. Where the sage can only counsel us to turn away and guard the gate, Christ goes further and offers a new heart from the inside. He came not to condemn…

Christ Connection - The One Who Humbled Himself and Was Exalted

This chapter declares that pride begins when the heart departs from its Maker, and that God overturns the thrones of the proud and sets up the meek in their place. Both find their answer in Christ. Where the first sin was the heart grasping to rise above its place, Jesus reversed the motion: being in the form of God, He "made himself of no reputation," took the form of a servant, and "humbled himself, and became obedient unto death" (Philippians 2:7-8). He is the meek One…

Christ Connection - The Lowly Head Lifted and the Covenant Kept

The threads of this chapter gather toward Christ. Sirach lifts up the lowly whose head God exalts, warns against trusting hoarded wealth, calls us to stand steadfast in the covenant, and says the end of a man discloses his works. Each of these finds its fulfillment in Him. He is the One who "humbled himself" and was therefore "highly exalted" by God (Philippians 2:8-9), the tapeinos whose lifted head is the pattern for every lowly life God raises. He told the very parable…

Christ Connection - The Friend Who Came in Our Adversity

Sirach says the truest friend is the one who draws near in adversity, when there is nothing to gain by it. That measure leads straight to Christ. He did not come to us in our prosperity but in our deepest poverty, while we were still weak, still sinners, still enemies, as Paul says, reconciled to God "by the death of his Son" (Romans 5:8-10). He named His own disciples friends, telling them, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"…

Christ Connection - The Hands That Were Stripped Bare for Us

This chapter draws a line between two kinds of hands. The rich man’s hands "make thee bare," stripping the poor of all they have and feeling no sorrow; the hands of God are the ones the lowly are told to wait for, hands that lift rather than rob. Both find their meeting point in Christ. The Lord who told His followers to invite the poor who could never repay them (Luke 14:13) is the same Lord who, "being rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty…

Christ Connection - The Shelter Where the Weary Find Rest

This chapter ends with a longing it cannot quite fulfill: to dwell forever in the shelter of Wisdom, resting under her branches, "protected under her covering from the heat." Scripture names the Wisdom of God in person. Paul calls Christ "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), in whom "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). And the rest Ben Sira pictures, the tent pitched beside Wisdom’s house where good things rest forever, is the very thin…

Christ Connection - The Choice, and the One Who Chose for Us

This chapter sets life and death before us and says, "stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt." That summons echoes through all of Scripture and comes to rest in Christ. Wisdom, who here feeds the seeker with "the bread of life" and clothes him in a "robe of glory," is the same Wisdom Paul names when he calls Christ "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24); and Jesus takes the very image onto His own lips: "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger"…

Christ Connection - The One Who Knew What Was in Man

Sirach’s great claim, that "every heart is understood" by God and that no soul is lost or hidden in the vastness of creation, finds a face in Jesus. The Gospels say that He "needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man" (John 2:25), reading the unspoken thoughts of those around Him the way this chapter says God reads every heart. To the woman who thought herself unknown He told her whole life; to Nathanael under the fig tree He proved Himself the…

Christ Connection - The Image Restored and the Mercy Made Flesh

This chapter speaks of humanity made in the image of God, given the law of life, bound to God in an everlasting covenant, watched by His unceasing eyes, and called to turn and find a mercy beyond measure. Each of these threads is gathered up in Christ. He is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), the perfect Image in whom our marred likeness is renewed, for those in Christ "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created h…

Christ Connection - The Mercy on All Flesh, Made Flesh

This chapter sings of a God whose mercy cannot be declared, whose mercy is upon all flesh, who tends His people as a shepherd, and who is patient with creatures as fleeting as a drop in the sea. Every one of those threads runs toward Christ. The mercy that is "upon all flesh" took flesh itself, for "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14), and in Him the mercy beyond all declaring came near enough to touch. The Shepherd who "hath m…

Christ Connection - The One Who Corrects in Order to Restore

This chapter’s pattern, go to your brother directly, reprove in private, give him room to clear himself or to change, is the very pattern the Lord lays down for his own people. "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother" (Matthew 18:15). The goal of correction is never to win or to wound; it is to gain a brother, to restore. And the One who taught this also lived it.…

Christ Connection - The Gift Given Without a Price

This stretch of the chapter draws a clean line between two kinds of giving. The fool gives "a few things, and upbraid much," watching with sevenfold eyes for what he can get back, so that his gift wounds the one who receives it. Against that whole portrait stands the way God gives. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16), and the giving carried no reminder, no debt held over the receiver’s head, no eye reaching back for repayment. Where the…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God and the Living Fountain

This chapter sets a fountain of life against a broken vessel, and roots all true wisdom in the fear of God. Both lines run toward Christ. Paul names Him "the wisdom of God" and says that in Him "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (1 Corinthians 1:24; Colossians 2:3) - the very wisdom this chapter says overflows like a flood is found whole in Him. And the image of "a fountain of life" finds its deepest answer at a well in Samaria, where He told a thirsty wom…

Christ Connection - The House That the Storm Cannot Move

Sirach’s picture of the heart bound into a foundation, steady when fear blows hard, reaches forward to the close of the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus describes the one who hears His words and does them as a man who builds his house upon a rock, so that when the rain falls and the floods come and the winds beat against it, the house does not fall, for it is founded on rock (Matthew 7:24-25). The fool of Sirach, who hears wisdom and lets it slide off like water off a seal…

Christ Connection - The Light No Darkness Can Hide From

The man in this chapter hides in the dark and whispers "Who seeth me?" and Ben Sira answers with the eyes of the Lord, brighter than the sun, reading the most hidden parts of the heart. The Gospel takes that very image and makes it personal. "I am the light of the world," Jesus says; "he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). When He met a woman at a well with a hidden past, He told her all that she had ever done, and s…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God Who Tented Among Us

This chapter sings of a Wisdom who came from the mouth of God before the world was made, through whom the heavens were ordered, who searched all creation for a home and then pitched her tent among a people. The New Testament takes up these very notes and sounds them over Jesus. Paul calls Him "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24); John says that in the beginning was the Word, that all things were made through Him, and that He "was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1…

Christ Connection - The Fear of the Lord Made Flesh

This chapter sets the fear of the Lord above every other treasure and calls it the beginning of love and of faith. The prophets foresaw a coming One on whom "the spirit of the fear of the LORD" would rest, who would delight in that fear (Isaiah 11:2-3), and the Gospels show us that very life: Jesus, who lived in perfect reverence toward His Father, "who in the days of his flesh... was heard in that he feared" (Hebrews 5:7). In Him the sage’s words come fully true, for Chri…

Christ Connection - Grace upon Grace, Built on the Rock

This chapter prizes the soul above all price, calls holy beauty "grace upon grace," and lays everything on the foundation of God’s commandments in the heart "as everlasting foundations upon a solid rock." Each of these reaches toward Christ. John writes that of His fullness "we all received, and grace for grace" (John 1:16), the very overflow this chapter glimpses. Jesus weighs the soul exactly as Sirach does, asking "what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matth…

Christ Connection - Tried in the Fire, Known by the Fruit

Two images anchor this passage, and both run straight to Christ. The first is the furnace that tries the vessel: Peter takes up the very same picture, telling believers that the testing of their faith is "more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire" (1 Peter 1:7), and that we should not be surprised at the "fiery trial" as though something strange were happening (1 Peter 4:12). The fire that reveals is the fire that refines, and the One who walk…

Christ Connection - The Word That Heals What the Tongue Breaks

This chapter sets two ledgers before us, forgiveness and the fire of the tongue, and Christ stands at the center of both. To the contradiction Sirach exposes, the man who begs mercy while withholding it, Jesus gives the same teaching and then the answer it requires: "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matthew 6:12), spoken by the One who from the cross prayed, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). He overlooked the ignorance of…

Christ Connection - Treasure in Heaven and the Mercy That Guards

Sirach 29 tells the reader to refuse the buried hoard, to place their treasure in the commandments of the Most High, and to store up mercy in the heart of the poor as a defense against all evil. Jesus takes up this very teaching and makes it His own. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven," He says, "for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:19-21). To the rich young ruler He says, "sell…

Christ Connection - The Joy That No One Takes Away

Sirach calls the joy of the heart the life of a person and a never failing treasure, and pleads with the sorrowing not to give their souls to sadness. The Gospel carries that plea to its source. Jesus told His friends, "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11), and on the eve of His suffering He promised a joy that "no man taketh from you" (John 16:22). Where Sirach commends a gladness that does not…

Christ Connection - The One Who Held All Things and Grasped Nothing

Sirach asks in wonder, "Who is he?" - who is the one who could have everything and not be ruined by it, who has the power to take and yet does not grasp? The Gospel answers with a name. Paul writes that Christ, "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). Here is the rich man without blemish in the fullest sense, the One who held all things and laid them down, who "could have transgressed" in the wi…

Christ Connection - The Lord Who Sat Down as One Who Serves

Sirach tells the one made ruler of the feast to "be among them as one of them," to care for the guests and take his place last. There is one supper where this was lived out perfectly. On the night He was betrayed, the Lord of all rose from the table, took a towel, and washed His disciples’ feet, the task of the lowest servant in the house (John 13:4-5). And He drew the lesson out for them: "whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sit…

Christ Connection - Laboring Not for Oneself but for Many

Ben Sira says of his gathered wisdom, "I have not laboured for myself only, but for all that seek discipline." That is the heart of a good teacher, and it points to the One who lived it fully. Jesus said the Son of man "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Where the teacher poured out the wisdom he had gathered for everyone willing to seek it, Christ poured out His own life for all who would come. The ful…

Christ Connection - The Shade at Noon and the Lifter of the Fallen

This chapter gathers the names of God’s care, protector, shade from the noonday heat, preservation from stumbling, the one who raises up the soul and gives health and life, and in Christ each of them takes on a face. He is the rock and shade His people had sung of, and Paul says that very rock followed Israel in the wilderness, "and that Rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). The sage’s confession, "I have been delivered by the grace of God," becomes the name of the One wh…

Christ Connection - The Offering God Receives and the Mercy That Falls Like Rain

This chapter gathers up two longings and carries them toward Christ. The first is the longing for an offering God will truly accept, a sacrifice that pleases Him fully. The whole book of Hebrews answers that God has provided one offering that perfects forever those who are set apart, and that He now seeks the sacrifice of lives given to do good and to show mercy (Hebrews 13:15-16). The merciful, justice-loving life Sirach calls an offering finds its model and its power in…

Christ Connection - The Mercy, the Gathering, and the Glory

This prayer asks for four things that the New Testament gathers up in Christ. It pleads for mercy on the people who bear God’s name; it asks that the nations come to know there is no God beside the Lord; it longs for the scattered tribes of Jacob to be gathered home; and it cries for Sion to be filled with glory and for the words of the former prophets to be fulfilled. Jesus stands at the meeting point of all four. He wept over Jerusalem and said, "how often would I have g…

Christ Connection - The True Word Who Goes Before Us

This chapter asks us to seek the holy counselor whose soul answers to our own and is sorry for us when we stumble, and above every other voice to pray that God would direct our way in truth. Both reach toward Christ. Isaiah names the child to come "Counsellor" and "Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6), the very counsel Ben Sira tells us to seek above all. And He is the friend whose soul drew near to our darkness, who "was in all points tempted like as we are" and so can be touche…

Christ Connection - The Great Physician Who Heals Body and Soul

This chapter holds together two truths that meet perfectly in Christ: that healing comes from God, and that the heart must be cleansed of sin even as the body is mended. Jesus called Himself the physician, saying "they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick" (Matthew 9:12), and He came for exactly the sin-sick souls this chapter has in view. Where Ben Sira tells us to pray, turn from sin, and then receive healing, Jesus does both at once: to the paralyz…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God Who Furnishes All in Due Time

This chapter follows the one who seeks out wisdom and is filled by God, and it sings that all the works of the Lord are good and furnished in their due time. Both threads lead to Christ. Paul names Him plainly: Christ is "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), and in Him "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3), the very treasures the scribe searched for in the secrets of parables. The seeker of Sirach 39 rose early and prayed and was filled w…

Christ Connection - The Mercy That Remains and the Wisdom Above All

This chapter sets one thing after another against the dust and asks what truly lasts. "Mercy remaineth for ever," it says, and "the love of wisdom is above them both," and at its summit, the fear of the Lord in which there is no want. Each of these reaches toward Christ. He is named "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), the One the love of wisdom was always seeking. He is mercy made flesh, the One to whom the blind and the lost cried "have mercy on me" and were never r…

Christ Connection - The Name That Death Could Not Blot Out

This chapter sets two destinies side by side: the name of the ungodly that is blotted out, and the good name that continues forever. Both find their answer in Jesus. He faced the very sentence Ben Sira tells us not to fear, and He met it not with dread but with trust, then broke it from the inside. Where this chapter declares that death is the lot of all flesh, the New Testament announces One who "abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light" (2 Timothy…

Christ Connection - The Glory We Could Not Hold, Made Near

Sirach 42 sings of a God whose works are spoken into being by His word, whose glory fills creation, from whom no thought can hide, who is from eternity to eternity, and whose full glory no one could ever be filled with beholding. The New Testament gathers every one of these threads into a person. John says that "in the beginning was the Word," that "all things were made by him," and that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory" (John 1:1, 3, 1…

Christ Connection - The Word That Stills the Deep

Sirach says of the Lord that "at his word the wind is still, and with his thought he appeaseth the deep." Centuries later, a boat full of seasoned fishermen was sinking in a storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus rose and "rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39). The disciples were left trembling with a new question: "What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" Sirach 4…

Christ Connection - The One Who Pleased God and the Ark of Salvation

Enoch "pleased God"; Noah was "found perfect" and became "a reconciliation" through whom a remnant was saved. Both reach toward Christ. At the Jordan a voice declared of Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17), the One who could say, "I do always those things that please him" (John 8:29), the perfect communion Enoch only foreshadowed. And the ark that carried Noah’s remnant through the waters of judgment is named in the New Testament as a…

Christ Connection - The Great High Priest Who Makes Reconciliation

This whole chapter circles the priesthood: an everlasting covenant, robes of glory, holiness engraved on the brow, and above all a man chosen "to make reconciliation for his people." The New Testament takes up every one of these and gives them their fullest meaning in Jesus. Hebrews calls Him "an high priest for ever" (Hebrews 6:20) and "a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens" (Hebrews 4:14), one who, unlike Aaron, needs no successor because He continues for…

Christ Connection - The Lamb, the Anointing, and the Name That Saves

This chapter quietly gathers up images that find their fullness in Christ. It opens with Joshua, "Jesus the son of Nave," great in the saving of his people, and the name Iesous is the very name the angel would later command for the child born to "save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). What Joshua did in shadow, leading Israel into an earthly inheritance, Jesus does in truth, leading His people into a rest that does not fade (Hebrews 4:8-9). Samuel "offered a lamb…

Christ Connection - The Horn of Salvation in the House of David

Sirach praises David for calling on the Lord, for the horn of his nation set up, and for a heart of whole praise that gave God the glory of every victory. Each of these notes carries forward to David’s greater Son. When Zacharias was filled with the Spirit, he blessed the God of Israel for raising up "an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David" (Luke 1:69), the very image this chapter gives to David now resting on Christ. The boy who took away his people…

Christ Connection - The One Elijah Pointed Toward

The promise that Elijah would return "to reconcile the heart of the father to the son" hangs over the whole New Testament. When the angel announced John the Baptist, he said John would go before the Lord "in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children" (Luke 1:17), and Jesus said plainly of John, "this is Elias, which was for to come" (Matthew 11:14). On the mountain of Transfiguration, Elijah himself appeared and spoke with Jesus, and…

Christ Connection - The One Who Tears Down to Build Again

Jeremiah was sent to pull down and to plant, to destroy and to build again, and the holy temple at the center of this chapter was burned and would be raised once more. Both point ahead to Christ. He stood in the temple and said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," and John tells us "he spake of the temple of his body" (John 2:19-21). The God who let Jerusalem fall did not abandon His people; He was at work, through judgment, toward a restoration no…

Christ Connection - The High Priest Clothed in Glory

Every image in this chapter strains toward someone greater than Simon. The high priest who shines like the sun, who is clothed in the robe of glory and the perfection of power, who comes out from the holy place to bless the people, is a portrait that finds its fullness in Christ. The book of Hebrews takes up exactly this picture and names Him "an high priest, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens" (Hebrews 7:26), a priest who do…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God Who Gives Rest

This chapter sings of wisdom sought from youth, wrestled for with tears, and found by the soul that directs itself toward her, and it ends by calling the weary to take her yoke and find rest. The New Testament gathers all of it into a person. Paul names Christ "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), and Colossians says that in Him "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). The wisdom the son of Sirach struggled toward across a lifetime stands r…