Humble yourself greatly: This sums up what ben Sira has been saying in all the admonitions in this section. It is the only verse in the section which does not begin with the negative “Not” in Hebrew. It begins with “Very, very,” which is emphatic. New American Bible nicely echoes this with “More and more, humble your pride.” Good News Translation has “Be very humble,” and Contemporary English Version says “So be as humble as you can.”

For the punishment of the ungodly is fire and worms is a good reason to be humble. We could translate “because sinners [or, those who do not obey the Lord] will be punished with fire and worms,” “because the Lord will use fire and worms to punish those who do not obey him,” or even “because the Lord will cause worms to eat the flesh of sinners and burn their bodies with fire.” See Isa 66.24; Jdt 16.17; Mark 9.48. The word ungodly describes people who are not only pagan, but also sinful.

Good News Translation, along with New American Bible (“what awaits man is worms”), prefers to read the Hebrew text here, which says literally “because the hope of man is the worm,” that is, worms are all we can look forward to, or as Good News Translation puts it, “because the decay of death awaits us all.” The same Hebrew words are found in The Mishnah: “Be exceedingly lowly of spirit, for the hope of man is but the worm” (Aboth 4.4). The saying there is attributed to an otherwise unknown rabbi. This is certainly in accord with what ben Sira says elsewhere about the finality of death; see 10.11; 17.27-28; 19.3. The Greek text, however, with the addition of fire and its interpretation of “hope” as punishment, is thinking in terms of hell. Ben Sira’s grandson and translator evidently believed in the final judgment and saw no harm in emending the original words to reflect that. The Handbook here adopts a conservative stance and recommends that translators follow the Greek.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Sirach. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.