Ecclesiasticus 12

[Ora_et_Labora_1]

I’m slowly reading through the OT and I’m currently halfway through the Book of Ecclesiasticus (I’ve enjoyed the Sapiential books and I find it hard to understand how a former literary Nobel Prize winner says that the Bible is a “mannual of bad habits” ). I’ve encountered some trouble though with the 12th chapter of this book. If taken at face value, this chapter says that we are not to help those that seek to do us evil. How does one, as a Christian, properly interpret this chapter?

 

[Advocatus_Fidei]

If you assist the evil you are helping them to do their evil works and become guilty of their evil yourself.

Why would you help someone work evil?

If someone said they wanted to kill people would you give them a gun?

This is telling you not to encourage sinners as they will then keep on sinning to their own destruction, as such it is not a good act to assist them in their evil ways.

WE must still love the wicked, but we need not help not trust them, to love them is to stop their evil. This is what was meant in Matthew 10 when we are told to be as wise as serpents.

 

[juliamajor]

Sirach is one of the wisdom books-being that didn’t mean that is always speaking theologically.Sometimes he was just talking plain old ordinary commonsense.I think it makes perfect sense not to aid someone who is seeking to do you harm.we are to be loving -not masochists

 

[Ora_et_Labora_1]

Still, if some one who wishes you harm is starving, would you not feed them?

 

[Advocatus_Fidei]

Still, if some one who wishes you harm is starving, would you not feed them?

That would really depend on what the consequences would be.

Say he was a evil man who would kill me and my wife and my children, is it for me to feed him so that he then has the strength to carry out his evil acts?

And what good would I really have achieved for such an evil man in helping him to such evil?

I would have done such an evil man no good at all, in fact I would have harmed him as his eternal damnation would now be that much more likely.

So you see things are not as straightforward or as simple as you perhaps you at first thought they were.

But of course this is all theoretical as you would never know someone really intended to do such things and if you did you would not go anywhere near them let alone feed them lol

The key to this passage is power, it is saying do not do anything to give evil people more power to do evil.

“hold back thy bread, and give it not to him, lest thereby he **overmaster **thee.”

 

[Joe_Kelley]

. . .(I’ve enjoyed the Sapiential books and I find it hard to understand how a former literary Nobel Prize winner says that the Bible is a “mannual of bad habits” ). . . .

Somewhere I encountered the comment “Just because some one has ab education doesn’t mean he isn’t stupid.”

 

[Verbum]

Hi Ora,

We cannot interpret any passage in the Bible without having read the whole bible. There is progress in the Old Testament and progress from the Old to the New. The Sermon on the Mount has several passages saying, “You have been told that… but I tell you this…” For example, see Matthew 5, 38.

Verbum