Do not reach out your hand for everything you see, and do not crowd your neighbor at the dish: This verse refers to a show of greediness at the dinner. There is a grammatical problem here. The Greek text literally reads “Wherever he looks, do not stretch out [your] hand and do not crowd him at the dish.” The pronouns “he” and “him” refer to the same person, but who is that person? Some scholars reverse verses 14 and 15 in order to make the pronouns in this verse refer back to the “neighbor” of verse 15. There is no textual ground for this, however. Some manuscripts read “you look” instead of “he looks”; this is followed by Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. But the problem does not disappear; it is only postponed until the next line. We may as well face it here and read the usual Greek text. We suggest this approach for the verse:

• Do not grab at what someone else has his eye on, and don’t elbow [or, crowd/push] a person out of the way to get at the food.

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.