Sirach 5

There is a kind of person Sirach 5 knows well, because there is a little of him in all of us. He has done well for himself, and some of what he holds was not got honestly, but he tells himself he has enough to live on and lets the matter rest. He has sinned, and no lightning fell, so he decides his sin must not have mattered much. He has heard that God is merciful, and he files that away as permission to keep going.

To this person the chapter speaks with unusual directness, naming the excuse and then dismantling it. The danger it warns against is not open rebellion. It is the slow drift of a heart that uses God's own patience as cover for putting Him off.

And yet the chapter is not a threat. It holds two things together that we are always tempted to pull apart. The Lord is "a patient rewarder," slow to anger and rich in mercy, and that same Lord takes sin seriously enough that His mercy and His wrath both come from Him. The conclusion is not "be afraid" but "be quick." "Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day."

Turn now, while the door stands open. The second half of the chapter widens the lesson to the tongue, calling for a settled, steadfast heart that listens before it speaks, answers with wisdom or keeps silent, and refuses the whisper that wounds. From first verse to last, the call is the same: stop drifting, and stand in the truth.

Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.

Sirach 5 (themed)Tobiolus Makes a Propitiatory Sacrifice, from "The Story of Tobias"Georg Pencz · 1543

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Sirach 5:1-3Do Not Set Your Heart on What Cannot Save You

1Set not thy heart upon unjust possessions, and say not: I have enough to live on: for it shall be of no service in the time of vengeance and darkness.

The chapter opens at the heart, because that is where the trouble starts. The warning is against setting the heart, fixing one's deepest hope and security, on possessions that were got unjustly. The self-talk that follows is the giveaway: "I have enough to live on." It sounds like contentment, but here it is the voice of a man quieting his conscience, deciding that because he is comfortable, the question of how he got comfortable can be left alone.

The chapter answers that wealth gained this way "shall be of no service in the time of vengeance and darkness." When the day of reckoning comes, the very thing the heart leaned on will not hold its weight.

2Follow not in thy strength the desires of thy heart: 3And say not: How mighty am I? and who shall bring me under for my deeds? for God will surely take revenge.

The second warning targets a person at the height of his powers. To "follow in thy strength the desires of thy heart" is to let appetite set the course simply because you have the strength to chase it down. Strength becomes its own justification: I can, therefore I may. The chapter cuts straight to the proud thought hiding underneath, the silent question, "How mighty am I? Who shall bring me under for my deeds?" It is the assumption that power places a person beyond accountability, that no one stands over him to call his actions to account.

The answer is short and absolute: "God will surely take revenge." Someone does stand over the mightiest man, and his deeds are not unwatched. This is not a portrait of a vindictive God lying in wait. It is the steady biblical conviction that the moral order is real, that "the LORD is a God of recompense" (Jeremiah 51:56), and that no amount of strength exempts a person from the truth of what he has done.

The proud question, "Who shall bring me under?" receives its quiet, certain reply: the One who made you, before whom strength itself is a gift on loan.

Listen for the sentences this chapter names, because they are the ones we say to ourselves too. "I have enough." "It is not really hurting anyone." "Who is going to call me on it?" Each one is a way of resting the heart on something that cannot bear the weight of a reckoning. Ask honestly today where your real security sits. If it is in what you own, in what you can pull off because you are capable enough to pull it off, the chapter loves you enough to warn you.

Move the anchor of your heart to the One who holds you, and the rest can be held with open hands.

Sirach 5:4-7Do Not Presume Upon the Mercy of God

4Say not: I have sinned, and whet harm hath befallen me? for the most High is a patient rewarder.

Here is the deepest self-deception in the chapter. A person sins, and because no disaster follows, he concludes the sin was harmless: "I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me?" He mistakes the silence of God's patience for the approval of God. The chapter names the truth he has misread: "the most High is a patient rewarder." The reason judgment did not fall is not that God did not notice. It is that God is patient, slow to anger, giving time for a heart to turn.

The very mercy the man takes as a sign he is fine is in fact a window held open for repentance, and he is reading it backward.

5Be not without fear about sin forgiven, and add not sin upon sin: 6And say not: The mercy of the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the multitude of my sins.

The warning sharpens. Do not grow careless even about sin that has been forgiven, treating pardon as a reason to relax your guard, and do not "add sin upon sin," piling one offense on the last because the first seemed to cost nothing. The "fear" the chapter commends is not terror that God will pounce. It is the reverent, wakeful seriousness that takes sin for what it is and refuses to play with it. Mercy received is meant to make us tender toward sin, not casual about it.

Then the chapter quotes the most dangerous sentence of all, dangerous precisely because it is true: "The mercy of the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the multitude of my sins." Every word of it is correct. The mercy of the Lord really is great. The peril is in how it is used, as advance permission to keep sinning, turning the most beautiful truth about God into an excuse to presume on Him.

The chapter does not deny the mercy. It refuses to let mercy be twisted into a license. Grace is meant to draw us back to God, and a heart that treats it as cover for staying away has not understood the gift it is leaning on.

7For mercy and wrath quickly come from him, and his wrath looketh upon sinners.

The chapter holds the two together rather than choosing between them: "mercy and wrath quickly come from him." Both belong to the one God, and neither cancels the other. To seize on His mercy while ignoring that He takes evil seriously is to know only half of Him, and to dread His justice while forgetting His mercy is to know the other half. The reader is asked to hold both, to trust the depth of His mercy and to honor the reality that He is not indifferent to wrong.

A God who was only patient would not be good; a God who was only severe would not be the God of Scripture. He is both, and both come quickly.

Notice how easy it is to use a true thing about God to avoid Him. "His mercy is great" is gloriously true, and it can become the smoothest excuse of all for putting off the change you know you need. Today, let the size of God's mercy do what it was meant to do: not give you permission to wait, but make you trust Him enough to come back now. If there is a sin you have been quietly excusing because nothing bad has happened, hear the chapter gently: the reason nothing has happened is that He is patient, and His patience is an invitation, not a verdict.

Sirach 5:8-10Delay Not to Be Converted to the Lord

8Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day. 9For his wrath shall come on a sudden, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy thee.

Everything in the chapter has been building to this single command: "Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day." Having stripped away every excuse, the chapter does not leave the reader in fear; it gives him a door and tells him to walk through it now. The enemy of the soul is rarely a dramatic refusal. It is the small, daily postponement, the "tomorrow" that quietly becomes "never."

"From day to day" names the slow leak by which a whole life slips past while a person always intends to turn and never quite does. The warning that God's wrath can come "on a sudden" is not meant to torment but to wake: no one is promised tomorrow, so the time to come home is today.

10Be not anxious for goods unjustly gotten: for they shall not profit thee in the day of calamity and revenge.

The chapter circles back to where it began, to wealth got unjustly, and seals the point. Do not be "anxious" for such goods, do not pour the energy of your worry and longing into them, "for they shall not profit thee in the day of calamity and revenge." The same lesson stands at the front door and the back: whatever a person grasps unjustly cannot be carried through the reckoning. The urgency to turn and the warning about wealth are one message. Both ask, where is your treasure, and will it hold when everything else is shaken?

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 us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). And where this chapter warns that the day comes suddenly, the New Testament answers with the same urgency turned into invitation: "behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). The mercy this chapter says is great is great enough to meet us in Christ today, and the only fitting response to a door held open is to walk through it while it stands open.

What have you been deferring "from day to day"? There is usually one thing, a habit to leave, a wrong to set right, a return to God you keep meaning to make next week. The chapter's counsel is the simplest and the hardest: do it today. Not because God is impatient, but because you have only today for certain, and the door He holds open is open now. Take one concrete step in the next hour, however small.

The whole movement of this chapter is from the slow drift of postponement to the single decisive turn, and that turn is always made in the present tense.

Sirach 5:11-15Be Steadfast, Be Quick to Hear, Slow to Answer

11Winnow not with every wind, and go not into every way: for so is every sinner proved by a double tongue. 12Be steadfast in the way of the Lord, and in the truth of thy judgment, and in knowledge, and let the word of peace and justice keep with thee.

The chapter now turns from wealth to character, and its image is vivid. To "winnow with every wind" is to throw your grain to whatever breeze happens to be blowing, to have no settled direction and drift with every opinion and pressure. The person who lives this way is marked by "a double tongue," saying one thing here and its opposite there, because there is no firm center holding the words together. Against this the chapter sets a single, steadying word: "Be steadfast in the way of the Lord, and in the truth of thy judgment."

Wisdom is not the cleverness to face every direction at once. It is the stability of a heart that has found the truth and stands in it.

13Be meek to hear the word, that thou mayst understand: and return a true answer with wisdom. 14If thou have understanding, answer thy neighbour: but if not, let thy hand be upon thy mouth, lest thou be surprised in an unskillful word, and be confounded.

Here is one of the most practical lines of wisdom in the chapter: "Be meek to hear the word, that thou mayst understand." To be "meek to hear" is to listen humbly, ready to receive before you are eager to reply, with understanding as the goal rather than the satisfaction of being heard. Only then comes the second half, "return a true answer with wisdom." The order matters. So much foolishness in speech comes from answering before listening, from being more committed to our reply than to the truth.

The chapter teaches the discipline of the open ear that precedes the wise word.

The counsel grows almost startling in its honesty: "If thou have understanding, answer thy neighbour: but if not, let thy hand be upon thy mouth." There is wisdom in knowing when you have something true to say, and deeper wisdom in knowing when you do not, and then keeping silent. The picture of a hand laid over the mouth is the gesture of someone deliberately holding back the unconsidered word, "lest thou be surprised in an unskillful word, and be confounded."

It is no shame to be silent where you lack understanding. The shame the chapter warns of belongs to the one who speaks past his knowledge and is embarrassed by his own hasty words.

15Honour and glory is in the word of the wise, but the tongue of the fool is his ruin.

The section closes by weighing the two outcomes. "Honour and glory is in the word of the wise," for words spoken from a steady, listening heart carry a weight that earns trust and does good. "But the tongue of the fool is his ruin," for the careless, double, unconsidered word eventually undoes the one who speaks it. The same instrument can build a good name or topple it. Which it does is decided by everything the chapter has just taught, whether a person is steadfast or scattered, meek to hear or quick to talk, willing to be silent or driven to fill every pause.

Try one of these today as a small discipline. When the next conversation tempts you to answer fast, be "meek to hear" first, listen all the way to the end before you form your reply. And when you find you do not actually know, let your hand be upon your mouth and simply say so, rather than talking past what you understand. There is a quiet strength in a person who is steadfast enough not to bend to every wind and humble enough to stay silent when silence is the wiser word.

That steadiness is what makes a person trustworthy, in speech and in everything else.

Sirach 5:16-18Do Not Be a Whisperer; Be Fair to Small and Great

16Be not called a whisperer, and be not taken in thy tongue, and confounded. 17For confusion and repentance is upon a thief, and an evil mark of disgrace upon the double tongued, but to the whisperer hatred, and enmity, and reproach.

The chapter names a particular ruin of the tongue: the "whisperer," the one who carries quiet words from ear to ear, who tears at reputations in private and sets people against one another by stealth. "Be not called a whisperer," the chapter pleads, do not let this become your name, "and be not taken in thy tongue," do not be caught and trapped by your own words. The verse that follows weighs the cost without flinching.

The thief earns "confusion and repentance," the double-tongued an "evil mark of disgrace," and the whisperer the heaviest harvest of all: "hatred, and enmity, and reproach." The damage the whisperer scatters in secret circles back to settle on his own head.

18Justify alike the small and the great.

The chapter ends on a single, weighty line: "Justify alike the small and the great." Deal justly with both, treat the lowly person and the powerful one by the same standard of fairness, and let neither poverty nor influence bend your judgment. It is the perfect close to a chapter that began by warning the mighty against thinking themselves beyond account. The God who "will surely take revenge" on the proud is the God who shows no partiality, and the wise person learns to mirror that justice: weighing small and great on one honest scale, owing the truth to everyone alike.

Two questions to carry out of this chapter. First, in your speech about people who are not in the room, are you ever a whisperer, carrying words that wound from one ear to the next? The chapter shows where that habit ends, and it is worth leaving before it costs you. Second, do you "justify alike the small and the great," giving the same honesty and fairness to the person who can do nothing for you as to the one who can?

A heart that has stopped resting on wealth and strength is finally free to be fair to everyone, because it no longer needs anything from anyone except God.

Where this echoes in Scripture

Do Not Set Your Heart on What Cannot Save You

Do Not Presume Upon the Mercy of God

Delay Not to Be Converted to the Lord

Be Steadfast, Be Quick to Hear, Slow to Answer

Do Not Be a Whisperer; Be Fair to Small and Great