Turn to the Lord and forsake your sins: Turn to the Lord may be rendered “Turn back [or, Return] to the Lord.” Forsake your sins means to renounce them, abandon them, leave them behind you, stop sinning. For the whole line we could say “Turn away from your sins [or, Stop sinning] and turn back to the Lord.”

Pray in his presence and lessen your offenses: While Pray in his presence could mean “pray in the Temple,” Good News Translation is probably correct in interpreting this clause to mean earnest, sincere prayer. The clause is literally “Pray to his face.” “Open your heart to him in prayer” is close to the meaning. The connection of the next clause (and lessen your offenses) in this line with the preceding clause is not clear. The whole line may mean that we are to do two things: (1) pray, and (2) lessen the number or seriousness of our sins. Or it may mean that we are to pray, and by doing so, lessen the number or seriousness of our sins. Good News Translation takes it to mean the latter. We advise taking the former course. Ben Sira seems to put the burden for getting rid of sin on us rather than on God; compare the first line of this verse and the first line of the next one. Basically lessen your offenses means “Don’t sin so much.” This may sound better when stated positively by rendering the whole line as follows: “Open your heart to him in prayer and live a more righteous life.”

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.