He made the moon also, to serve in its season: The Greek text of this line is full of problems, and the Hebrew (read by Good News Translation) is not any better. The line cannot be reconstructed with any confidence. We offer this as a model: “He also made the moon, to serve a purpose of its own.” The following footnote should also be added: “This line is unclear in both Greek and Hebrew.” This translation, like all others we have seen, has an air of desperation about it, but it does fit the context. It has some textual basis in the Greek, and it is possible to emend the Hebrew text to agree with it. Essentially it is the solution offered by Box and Oesterley.

To mark the times and to be an everlasting sign: This says that the purpose of the moon is to be a never-changing marker of the seasons. Good News Translation will do nicely after the model for the first line suggested above, although we might also say “to be an eternal sign of the changing seasons” or “serving for all time as a sign of the changing seasons.”

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.