Sirach 24:1-4, 12-16

“I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.” (Sirach 24:12)

Chapter 24 stands at the centre of Ben Sira’s book and is its boldest theological move. Wisdom speaks in the first person, as she does in Proverbs 8, opening her mouth in the midst of her people and in the assembly of the Most High (vv. 1-2), with her throne in a pillar of cloud (v. 4), the sign of the wilderness presence. The verses joined to that prologue describe her settlement: she takes root in an honored people and then grows through a catalogue of Mediterranean flora, cedar of Lebanon, cypress on Hermon, palm at En-gedi, rose bushes at Jericho, olive, plane tree and terebinth (vv. 13-16). Wisdom, on this account, is not a universal abstraction but a located gift, and at 24:23 Ben Sira names her outright as the book of the covenant, the law Moses commanded. Baruch 3:36-4:1 makes the same identification more briefly.

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