Commentary on Sirach 17:1-15

Today Sirach speaks of the relationship between the Creator and the human beings he has made. It is part of a poem in praise of the Lord for the creation of humankind. The author is following the order of Genesis and has already spoken of the creation of stars, plants and animals.

He combines in one the two accounts of the creation of humankind (Gen 1:26-27; 2:7) and interprets the image of God in humans under the headings of authority, strength, and dominion, thus developing a hierarchy of power: God, humans, living beings.

Humans were created by God from the earth, and will at the end return to earth. The First Man had been created a living thing from the earth and at the end is buried and returns to where he came from.

Human life on earth is temporary, but privileged:

He gave them a fixed number of days
but granted them authority over everything on the earth.
He endowed them with strength like his own
and made them in his own image.

God shared his ability to know and love and to have his vision of creation.

Because of this, we were put in charge over all beasts and flying things and:

…put the fear of them in all living beings…

This is a generally true statement, but there are exceptions where the human is the one who fears.

God shaped humans giving them:

Discretion and tongue and eyes,
ears and a mind for thinking…
He filled them with knowledge and understanding
and showed them good and evil.
He put the fear of him into their hearts
to show them the majesty of his works.

The Israelites believed that the heart was the seat of reason rather than the seat of the emotions, as it is for us. The list of faculties for perception is similar to that common to the Stoic tradition. The ‘five faculties’ were sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste.

The human was also filled with knowledge and understanding and given a sense of good and evil. In this way, God’s light was planted in human thinking so that we could appreciate, as other creatures cannot, the magnificence of God’s creation.

God also taught us as well:

He bestowed knowledge upon them
and allotted to them the law of life.

This refers to the Law of Moses, which is included in the endowments that God “allotted” to mankind. The gifts of Creation and of Mount Sinai are here telescoped into one act of God.

And we were given another gift:

Their eyes saw his glorious majesty,
and their ears heard the glory of his voice.

This is a reference to the Israelites’ experience at Mount Sinai.

For us, of course, there is the further teaching that we have received through the Incarnate Son of God and a new “an eternal covenant”:

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
(John 10:10)

Our response to all these gifts will be to:

…praise his holy name,
to proclaim the grandeur of his works.

A very important part of our prayer is to praise and thank the Lord for the beauty and gift of his creation.

At Mount Sinai also, God told his people to beware of all wrongdoing and:

…he gave commandment to each of them concerning the neighbor.

He did this through the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law. And they needed—as we do—to be aware that:

Their ways are always before him;
they will not be hidden from his eyes.

Let each one of us reflect that we too are part of this creation, we have been given these gifts to develop so that we can continue to grow ever more in the likeness of our God. That is the sole purpose of our existence and we forget it at our peril.