Forsake not an old friend,
for the new is not comparable to him.
A new friend is as new wine,
when it is old, thou wilt drink it with pleasure (ix. 10),
with which we may bracket the noble passage on the treatment of a friend's trespass (xix. 13-17). One of the fine religious passages has been quoted already (xliii. 27; comp. Job xxvi. 14); we may couple this[1] with it—
As a drop from the sea, and a grain of sand,
so are a few years in the day of eternity (xviii. 9).
Still the chief value of the book is, historically, to fill out the picture of a little known period, and doctrinally, to show the inadequacy of the old forms of religious belief, and the moral distress from which the Christ was a deliverer.
AIDS TO THE STUDENT.
Besides the commentaries of Bretschneider (1806), Fritzsche (1859), and Bissell (in the American edition of Lange), see Gfrörer, Philo, ii. (1831), pp. 18-52; Dähne, Geschichtliche Darstellung der jüdisch-alexandrin. Religionsphilosophie, ii. (1834), pp. 126-150; Zunz, Die gottesdienstl. Vorträge der Juden (1832), pp. 100-105; Ewald, Jahrbücher der bibl. Wissenschaft, iii. (1851), pp. 125-140; History of Israel, v. 262 &c.; Jost, Gesch. des Judenthums, i. (1857), p. 310 &c.; Herzfeld, Gesch. des Volkes Jisrael, iii. (1863), see Index; Horowitz, Das Buch Jesus Sirach (1865); Dyserinck, De Spreuken van Jesus den zoon van Sirach vertaald (1870); Grätz, Monatsschrift for 1872, pp. 49 &c., 97 &c.; Seligmann, Das Buch der Weisheit des Jesus Sirach (1883); Fritzsche, art. in Schenkel's Bibellexikon, iii. 252 &c.; Stanley, Jewish Church, vol. iii. (see Index); Westcott, art. 'Ecclesiasticus' in Smith's Bible Dictionary; Deane, 'The Book of Ecclesiasticus: its Contents and Character,' The Expositor, Nov. 1883; Wright, The Book of Koheleth, 1883, chap. ii. (decides, perhaps, too hastily that Sirach in many passages imitates Koheleth).
- ↑ Bishop Butler, who is fond of Sirach, quotes this saying in his 4th sermon.
