Sir 15:15 “He added his commandments and precepts.”
These words are now lacking in the Greek and Syriac texts; nevertheless, it can be gathered that they once stood here, since St Augustine, in the Speculum, reads them in the same way.
The sense is this: God created man free and left him in the hand of his own counsel, but not in such a way that he dismissed him from himself and his providence, as though letting him roam freely like a wild ass, released from all law to wander wherever he pleased. Rather, as the supreme governor of all, legislator, king, Lord, judge, and avenger, God proposed his laws to man—namely, the natural law, or Decalogue, implanted in Adam and his descendants together with mind and reason; and the positive law, that is, the ceremonial and judicial law, he later delivered through Moses.
And lest these laws should seem burdensome and oppressive to man, God added rewards for the obedient and threatened punishments for the disobedient.
Thus God established three things, and in this order:
first, he bestowed free will upon man;
second, he added precepts;
third, he attached rewards and punishments.
For the free will that God gave you is precisely so that you may serve him
Sir 15:16 “If you wish to keep the commandments, they will preserve you, and forever to practice a pleasing fidelity.”
The Greek text has a more concise form: “If you wish, you will keep the commandments and practice a fidelity of good pleasure.” That is, it lies within your power and is entrusted to you that you should practice fidelity, that is, render faithfulness pleasing to God and worthy of grace.
For “to practice pleasing fidelity” depends upon “you will keep”, and it explains “the commandments”, namely that by keeping the commandments you will continue to render fidelity pleasing and due to God.
Hence St Augustine, in On Grace and Free Will (ch. 2), reads: “If you wish, you will keep the commandments and a good fidelity of good pleasure.” Yet in the Speculum he reads it exactly as our interpreter does. The Syriac likewise says: “If you wish, you will keep his precepts, and if you believe in it, you yourself will be preserved.”
These are correlative expressions. Our version is fuller and more forceful; therefore it appears that our interpreter either had a fuller Greek exemplar or penetrated more deeply into the force of the Greek expression and rendered it more fully through an elegant paronomasia.
For the Greek text literally reads: ἐὰν θέλῃς, συντηρήσεις ἐντολάς (ean thelēs, syntērēseis entolas), “If you wish, you will preserve the commandments.” The force lies in the preposition σύν (syn, “together with”), indicating mutual preservation. That is, if you preserve the commandments, they in turn will preserve you.
Preservation here is mutual: the preserver is preserved, and the preserved preserves. Thus the commandments and their observance are not merely guards of the body, but guardians of the soul, defending it even from internal enemies. Just as a king is guarded more by mercy and truth than by soldiers and attendants, and his throne is strengthened by clemency (Proverbs 20:28).
Accordingly, the Zurich Bible translates: “If you wish, you will keep the commandments, and they in turn will preserve you,” both in the present life and in eternal life, both in God’s grace and in glory.
This happens:
first, because God preserves the one who keeps his commandments;
second, because the very exercise of the commandments increases virtue in the soul, and increased virtue gives strength to resist temptation and the devil;
third, because keeping the commandments diminishes concupiscence, which is the poison of charity. For as virtue increases, the opposing vice necessarily decreases.
On “forever to practice pleasing fidelity”
This phrase depends on what precedes. Thus repeat the sense: If you wish forever to practice fidelity pleasing to God by keeping his commandments, this fidelity in turn will forever preserve you.
For God allows a like fidelity—indeed a greater one—toward you. If you are faithful to God, God will be faithful to you; indeed, more faithful and most faithful.
This is, as it were, a covenant between God and man, by which each pledges fidelity to the other: man pledges obedience and observance of God’s commandments; God pledges grace, protection, and glorious reward.
Thus “keeping the commandments” is explained as practicing pleasing fidelity. The interpreter applies the words “if you wish” and “they will preserve” first to the commandments, and implicitly to faith as well, to avoid repetition for the sake of brevity and elegance.
Hence the Complutensian and other ancient Bibles read: “to keep pleasing fidelity.” The Zurich Bible renders: “You will keep the commandments, and they will preserve you, and you will practice obedient fidelity.”
One may also admit here a hysteron proteron, such that the sense is: If you wish to keep the commandments and to practice pleasing fidelity, these two—commandments and faith, which are in reality one—will preserve you.
This manner of expression is common: after finishing a sentence, the mind adds something implied, leaving the hearer to supply and arrange the remainder from what has already been said.
Grace and Free Will
Free will does not exclude the grace of God, as Pelagius claimed, just as a secondary cause does not exclude the concurrence of the first cause. Grace is subordinate to God and depends entirely upon him; nothing can act—or even exist—without the concurrence of the first cause.
Thus St Augustine, On Grace and Free Will (ch. 15), says:
“This is why it is written, ‘If you wish, you will keep the commandments’: so that a man who does not yet fully will may recognize this and pray to receive such a will as suffices to fulfill the commandments.”
For then it is useful to will when we can, and useful to be able when we will. What good is it to will what we cannot do, or to be able to do what we do not will?
He then refutes the Pelagian argument, saying:
“The Pelagians think they know something great when they say: God would not command what he knew could not be done by man. Who does not know this? But God commands certain things we cannot do, so that we may know what we ought to ask of him. Faith itself obtains by prayer what the law commands.”
Indeed, the very one who said “If you wish, you will keep the commandments” later says in the same book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach 22): “Who will set a guard upon my mouth and a wise seal upon my lips, lest I fall by them and my tongue destroy me?” He had already received the commandment, “Keep your tongue from evil.” Hence Psalm 33: “Set a guard, O Lord, upon my mouth.”
Therefore, since “If you wish, you will keep the commandments” is true, it is also true that one must pray for the grace to keep them.
Symbolic Interpretation
Symbolically, Hugh of St Victor, Dionysius, and Palacius say that “to practice pleasing fidelity” means to keep faith in heart and in works, because “faith without works is dead” (James 2). Thus pleasing faith is faith working through love and its works.
Hence Radulphus, commenting mystically on Leviticus 26:3 (“If you walk in my precepts…”), explains that “threshing will overtake the harvest and the vintage the sowing”: every good action, he says, is both harvest and seed, because the delight the soul receives from completed labors generates new desires for good, so that by the multiplication of virtuous actions, the harvest of reward is likewise multiplied.
Sir 15:17 He has set before you fire and water; stretch forth your hand to whichever you will.
The Tigurine version renders: He has set fire and water before you; stretch forth your hand to whichever you wish.
The Syriac: Fire and water are left before you; to whatever you will, extend your hand.
By fire and water, which are opposed elements, we are proverbially to understand any contraries whatsoever, and especially those which are named in the following verse, namely good and evil, life and death. Hence the Syriac makes this explicit by a causal explanation when it adds: For life and death are given to men.
Secondly, by water, which refreshes, understand the refreshment of glory; by fire, punishment and the flame of Gehenna. Thus God has set before you eternal good and eternal evil: glory and its reward, namely heaven; and evil and its punishment, namely eternal fire. He has proposed to you heaven and hell, happiness and misery, life and death. Choose whichever you will.
Thus Rabanus says: In fire, tribulation is expressed; in water, refreshment. Therefore tribulation and prosperity are set before us. If we wish to practice the commandments of God by our works, we shall have the consolation of eternal life; but if we despise His commandments, the punishment of Gehenna will follow us in wrath.
So too Lyra, Jansenius, Palacius, and others. For by fire is aptly signified the fire of hell, and by water heaven, because the heavens were made from the waters, and waters are above the heavens, as I said on Genesis 1:1 and 6.
Thus God has suspended the human will, as it were, in mid-air between two extreme elements: water as a symbol of the refreshment of eternal life, and fire as an expression of the torments of hell.
Wherefore Nazianzen, in his Oration on the Love of the Poor, teaches that man consists partly of earth below and partly of heaven above; partly of concupiscence, partly of reason and mind, which shows the way of justice leading to heaven. And he asserts that this was done by divine counsel, so that man might know himself to be composed, as it were, of both heavenly and infernal matter, so that he may incline to whichever he wills.
“So that we may understand,” he says, “that we are at once the greatest and the most abject: earthly and heavenly, transient and immortal, heirs of light or of fire, according as we incline to one or the other.”
From what has been said it is clear that free will is a balance, whose weigher is man himself; the scales are fire and water, good and evil, reward and punishment, with an inclination toward either and the freedom to choose either.
Hence Tertullian (Against Marcion, book 2, chapter 6), speaking of man endowed with liberty, says: As it were a balance-holder emancipated from God, freedom and power of choice are given to man. And then he inveighs against those who, while they rule the world with free will, nevertheless make it a slave to concupiscence and sin.
“For otherwise,” he says, “how would it be fitting that man, possessing the goods of the whole world, should not reign in possession of his own soul—lord of others, but servant of himself? He would be less fit.”
Less aptly and less genuinely some understand fire and water to signify simply the things of this world, whose use God has granted to man, so that he may use them freely—well unto life, badly unto death. Others think there is an allusion to the Roman rite by which a bride, pledging herself to her husband, touched fire and water. For, as Plutarch says (Roman Questions), fire purifies and water cleanses, and a woman who marries ought to preserve purity and chastity. Thus, in a similar way, God has set fire and water before each person, so that through tribulations we may be purified and cleansed, and so present souls to Christ the Bridegroom as pure and spotless brides.
These interpretations, however, are less genuine, for from what follows it is clear that water and fire are opposed as good and evil, life and death, so that it belongs to man freely to embrace one and reject the other; but it belongs to the wise man to choose what is good.
Sir 15:18: Before man are life and death, good and evil; that which he pleases shall be given to him.
The Syriac: Life and death are given to men, that they may choose life and abandon death.
This alludes to Deuteronomy 30:15: Consider that today I have set before you life and good, and conversely death and evil. And again (v. 19): I call heaven and earth as witnesses today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose therefore life, that you and your offspring may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, obey His voice, and cling to Him; for He is your life and the length of your days.
St. Chrysostom says: He wished life and death to be like a free hunt, so that, as though suspended aloft, they might be exposed as prey to the faithful.
See also St. Basil, Homily on Psalm 61, on the words But the sons of men are vain, deceitful in the balances, where he teaches that this balance is free will, reason, and counsel implanted by God in man. Those are deceitful who have corrupted reason, judgment, and counsel. Hear his words:
“What then does this mean? That within each of us there is a certain balance prepared by the Creator, by which you may rightly discern the nature of things. ‘I have set before you,’ He says, ‘life and death, good and evil—two natures opposed to one another. Examine these at your own tribunal and judgment, and carefully weigh which is more useful for you: whether to choose momentary and short-lived pleasure, by which you grasp eternal death; or to prefer affliction in the exercise of virtue, by which you acquire everlasting delights.’”
Men are therefore deceitful who have corrupted the judgments of their souls—whom the prophet calls wretched, saying: Woe to those who call darkness light and light darkness, bitter sweet and sweet bitter.
“You say to me: Who knows the future? By bad weighing, choosing evil for good, preferring vain things to true, momentary to eternal, transient pleasure to joy that will never fail.”
Thus men are deceitful, injuring chiefly themselves by abusing the balance, and then their neighbors as well, since by acting badly for themselves they become a bad example to others. Nor on the day of judgment will it be permitted to say: I did not know what was good. For the balance was given to you—a balance sufficient to discern good and evil.
For bodily weights we test in the scales; but those things which pertain to the ordering of life we discern by free will—which he therefore calls a balance, because it can incline with equal force toward either side.
Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, book 2, chapter 5), citing this passage under the name of Solomon, says: Behold, I set before you life and death: to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to hear His voice, and to believe is life. But he blends the words of Ecclesiasticus with those of Moses from Deuteronomy, as is clear from comparing the two, even abbreviating Moses’ words.
Origen, Clement’s disciple, explains this passage similarly in On Romans, book 1. And Gaudentius, Bishop of Brescia (Tract 13 on the Nativity of the Lord), says that the Lord, as a truly just judge, wills that each one be the cause of his own merit: that the just should suffer for justice itself, and the unjust, if he persists in malice, be judged worthy of death by his own choice.
“For God,” he says, “formed man, as Scripture testifies, in His image and likeness, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He set before him fire and water, saying: To whichever you will, stretch forth your hand. That is, God set before men refreshment and punishment, remission and retribution, life and death. Who, I ask, would not flee punishment and death and choose refreshment, remission, and life?”
Mystically, Origen understands life to be Christ, and death to be the Devil. Thus he says (On Romans, book 1): Behold, I have set before you life and death, fire and water. Life therefore is Christ, and death is the last enemy, the Devil. If the soul, recognizing God, does not embrace Christ as its life, it will undoubtedly be abandoned and deserted by those who once favored it.
Morally, see here how great is man’s endowment and dignity: free will.
Its dignity comes from God, because by it man
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is in some way like God and the angels,
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surpasses other creatures,
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is lord of himself and of his actions,
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is capable of virtue,
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capable of merit,
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and merits eternal life and glory.
Hence St. Bernard (On the Love of God) says: The dignity in man is free will, by which he is given not only preeminence but governance over living beings. And again (Sermon 81 on the Canticles): Freedom of choice is something truly divine, shining in the soul like a gem in gold. By it there is knowledge of judgment and the option of choosing between good and evil, life and death, light and darkness.
Therefore man must strive with all his strength to use this liberty well, toward the good for which God gave it, namely that by doing good he may merit eternal happiness. To accomplish this, he should bind it to God, offer and consecrate it to Him by a firm and frequently renewed purpose of obeying Him in all things, continually asking Him to possess it as His own and govern and direct it by His grace toward every good—and thus toward eternal salvation.
For if it is possessed by concupiscence, sin, and the Devil, it will be driven to every evil and finally into Gehenna. Hence St. Augustine (Enchiridion, chapter 30): Man, using free will badly, lost both himself and it. And shortly after: By free will sin was committed; by victorious sin free will was lost—not as freedom opposed to coercion, but as freedom from sin and punishment.
Thus Augustine adds: By whom a man is overcome, to him he is enslaved. For what freedom can there be in a slave, except when it delights him to sin? He freely serves who gladly does his master’s will; thus he is free to sin who is a slave of sin.
And in chapter 25 he adds: The Lord threatened man with the punishment of death if he sinned, thus bestowing free will, yet ruling by command and terrifying by consequence.
Sir 15:19: For great is the wisdom of God, mighty in power, and all things His eyes behold.
That is, God established man in the hand of his own counsel by great wisdom, so that man, acting freely, might choose good or evil and thus merit reward or punishment, and so that in the glorification or damnation of men He might show His most powerful might. And lest anyone think he can hide, deceive, or escape in so great a multitude, it adds: seeing all things without interruption, for the eye of God sees every individual and even the most hidden things, to judge, reward, or punish.
The Greek has: For great is the wisdom of the Lord; He is mighty in power and sees all things.
The Syriac: For the wisdom of God is strong and mighty with gigantic strength. Hence the Syrians call God “the giant of the ages,” because He embraces and encompasses all ages by His eternity, immensity, and power, and all things are seen by His eyes.
“…and all things His eyes behold.
Palacius refers this to Sir 15:11, for he judges these words to be directed against certain theologasters who subtly cavil, claiming that the wicked act badly because efficacious grace is lacking to them for doing good—or that the impious choose evil because God has not efficaciously given them good. Against these, Sirach adds: Great is the wisdom of God, and mighty is His power, that is, God is so wise that He gives grace only to whom He wills, and nevertheless cuts off every occasion of complaint from those to whom He did not will to give it.
For these men will be cast into the fire, not because grace was denied them, but because, having both good and evil set before them, they stretched forth their hand to evil. Therefore great is the wisdom of God, because He removes all grounds of complaint from the wicked; and mighty is divine power, which gives sufficient grace, by which they could do what God wills, and does whatever He wills.
Let the reprobate therefore gnaw on this bone: he will not be damned in eternal fire because grace was denied to him, but because of the fault committed by himself. Let him beware of evil as far as he is able, and he will also avoid the fire.
The Author spoke most profoundly in those words: That which pleases him shall be given to him. Do not, therefore, impiously believe that anything else is given to you except what you yourself have chosen.
Thus Palacius.
Boethius speaks excellently (Consolation of Philosophy, book 5, prose 6):
“All future things,” he says, “the divine intellect foresees and draws back into the present of its own knowledge, nor does it alternate between knowing this now and that later, but with one single glance anticipates all changes while remaining itself unmoved.”
Add to this that God prepares and gives grace even to the impious, especially if they humbly do not reject it; and God foresaw this. Therefore it is said to them that if they wish, they may avoid sins and embrace good. For this reason grace is called sufficient: because if they wish to cooperate with it, they will make it efficacious. For grace is called efficacious because it has an effect.
Yet it is not in our power that God should give us that grace which He foresees will be congruous and efficacious rather than another which He foresees will be inefficacious. Nevertheless, God freely and from His own liberality gives to all a grace with which, if the impious were willing to cooperate, they would make it efficacious just as the pious do. But because they themselves freely refuse to cooperate, they render it void and inefficacious by their own sloth or malice—although God wills and altogether desires that they should cooperate with it and make it fruitful and efficacious.
For God does not deliberately seek out or choose inefficacious graces to give to the impious. Rather, from the side and intention of God, every grace is efficacious in the first act—that is, it has the power and efficacy to bring about the work if the will is willing to cooperate with it. This God intends and wills; for it is fitting to God that He sincerely and from the heart desire that the will cooperate with grace and thus that the work be accomplished through it. This alone is why He gives grace, nor can any other explanation be devised, as theologians commonly teach.
The Syriac translates: And He knows all the thoughts of men. The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear Him, and He recognizes every work of man.
Sir 15:20: “The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him; he himself knows every work of man.”
He confirms and amplifies what He said above, and seeing all things. For in order to encourage the pious to choose and do good—which worldly men in this life neglect, despise, or even scorn—he says that the eyes of God continually contemplate those who fear Him, and that He recognizes, indeed inspects, every work.
The Greek has πᾶν ἔργον (pan ergon), that is, every work or operation of man, both external and internal. Hence Job 31:4: Does not God consider my ways and count all my steps?
Among the other rewards of those who fear God is this: that He particularly protects them, directs them, and hears their prayers, according to Psalm 32:18: The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear Him, upon those who hope in His mercy. And Psalm 144:19: He will do the will of those who fear Him; He will hear their supplication and save them.
On the contrary, of the impious who do not fear God it is said in Proverbs 28:9: He who turns away his ears so as not to hear the law—that is, who does not fear God—his prayer shall be an abomination.
Note that the eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear Him.
First, “eyes” symbolically signify that God, with the most acute gaze of His intellect, penetrates and knows all the actions, intentions, and desires of the just.
Secondly, they signify that He delights in them and is nourished by them.
Thirdly, that He singularly loves them, cares for them, protects them, and provides them with every good. For eyes, as Aristotle teaches (History of Animals, book 1, chapters 10 and 11), terminate in the brain, and in the brain are both providence and governance. And in chapter 6 he says that there are three channels from the eyes to the brain: the largest and the medium extend to the cerebellum, the smallest reach the brain itself.
Hence Aristotle adds in chapter 10 that in the eyes appear signs of the mind and soul. “Those,” he says, “who moderately close their eyes bear marks of praiseworthy character; of the rest, some indicate imprudence, others inconstancy.”
Thus God has those who fear Him “in His eyes,” that is, in His mind, in His care and love; and by gently and benevolently looking upon them, He manifests His most favorable disposition toward them.
Fourthly, the eyes of the Lord signify that He distinguishes those who fear Him from those who do not, by giving them grace and glory.
Hence Tertullian (Against Marcion, book 2, chapter 4): And God said, “Let it be,” and it was done; and God saw that it was good (Genesis 1)—not as though He did not know the good unless He saw it, but because, since it was good, He saw it by honoring it, approving it, and marking the goodness of the works by the dignity of His gaze.
Fifthly, that God holds those who fear Him in the highest esteem, as those whom He has before His eyes above the whole world. For, as Pliny says (Natural History, book 11, chapter 27), the eyes are the most precious part of the body, and by the use of light they distinguish life from death.
Hence it is said: Whoever touches you touches the apple of My eye (Zechariah 2:8). See what is said there: namely, that those who fear God and His law in turn guard them as the pupil of their eye, as it is said in Proverbs 7:2: Keep my commandments and live… guard them as the apple of your eye.
CONTINUE
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