Unrighteous anger cannot be justified: This refers to anger that has no cause—losing one’s temper for no good reason. There is no excuse for it and it accomplishes nothing. Good News Translation says “There is no excuse for unjustified anger,” and Contemporary English Version has “It is never right to be angry without a reason.”

For a man’s anger tips the scale to his ruin is literally “for the weight of his anger [is/will be] his downfall.” The image of a scale—a pair of balances—is implied in the Greek word used for “weight,” but a scale is not actually mentioned. Anger causes the scale to weigh downwards. The general idea of the image here comes across in “anger like that is enough to ruin a person [or, cause a person’s downfall].” A man does not refer exclusively to males, but to all humans. As is often the case, Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version express the idea of a man with a second person pronoun to avoid an exclusive male reference. This works well in English, and is appropriate to these sections of Sirach where the author is giving his reader advice. Indeed, the author himself often does this.

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.