Sirach

Chapters

1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7
8. 8
9. 9
10. 10
11. 11
12. 12
13. 13
14. 14
15. 15
16. 16
17. 17
18. 18
19. 19
20. 20
21. 21
22. 22
23. 23
24. 24
25. 25
26. 26
27. 27
28. 28
29. 29
30. 30
31. 31
32. 32
33. 33
34. 34
35. 35
36. 36
37. 37
38. 38
39. 39
40. 40
41. 41
42. 42
43. 43
44. 44
45. 45
46. 46
47. 47
48. 48
49. 49
50. 50
51. 51

In the maps

• Sirach 25:24

  Two centuries before Christ, Ben Sira states that sin began with a woman and that through her all die. Pitre uses this to show that Jewish tradition already read Eve as the one through whom death entered the world. The New Eve reverses the pattern: through a woman's obedience life comes into the world, matching Paul's contrast between the disobedient Adam and the obedient Christ.

• Sirach 40:1

  Ben Sira describes human life as running from the mother's womb to 'the mother of all,' the earth that receives the dead. Pitre cites it with Jeremiah 20:17 to show that ancient Judaism paired the womb and the tomb. That pairing lets the Fathers read the virgin birth and the resurrection together: Jesus came forth from a sealed womb and rose from a sealed tomb, and the one is a sign of the other.

• Sirach 51:5

  Ben Sira thanks God for rescue 'from the depth of the womb of Hades.' Pitre cites it as the sharpest of the texts that picture the grave as a womb (p 137). If death is a return to the womb, then rising from the sealed tomb is a kind of birth — which is how Ephrem could say the seal of the tomb bore witness to the seal of the womb, and why Jesus risen is 'the firstborn among many brethren' (Romans 8:29).