(f) (Give me) any plague but the plague of the heart,
and any wickedness but the wickedness of a woman &c.
(xxv. 13-26).
This opening verse might perhaps be otherwise rendered,
Any wound but a wound in the heart,
and any evil but evil in a wife.
The misfortune of having a bad wife is often touched upon in the Talmud. Ewald’s sentence is however just, that Sirach’s ‘estimate of women, and sharp summary counsel concerning divorce (see ver. 26), place [him] far below the height of the Hebrew Bible.’[[267]]
I admit the imperfection of these moral statements; but can they not several of them be paralleled from the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes? And can we not find as many more anticipations of the moral teaching of the Synoptic Gospels and St. James (e.g. iv. 10, vii. 11, 14, xi. 18, 19, xv. 14, xvii. 15, xxiii. 4, 11, 18)? Do not let us undervalue any foregleams of the coming dawn.
CHAPTER II.
SIRACH’S TEACHING (continued). HIS PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT.
Passing now from Sirach’s moral statements to those which are concerned with doctrine, an honest critic must admit that the author is here even less progressive. The Messianic hope, in the strict sense of the word, has faded away.[[268]] In xlv. 25 (comp. xlviii. 15) the ‘covenant with David’ is described as being ‘that the inheritance of the king should be only from father to son;’ similarly in xlvii. 22 the ‘root of David’ denotes Rehoboam and his descendants. But this want of a definite Messianic hope is characteristic of the age; it is no special defect of Sirach. But what shall we say of another charge brought against our author, viz. that he has unbiblical conceptions of the Divine nature? One of these (xi. 16; see A.V.) may be dismissed at once, the passage having insufficient critical authority. Another—