All living beings become old like a garment: All living beings is literally “All flesh.” It can be taken to refer to All living beings or specifically to people. Good News Translation, rightly we think, takes it to refer to humans. Another way of stating the whole line is “Our bodies are like our clothes—they wear out.” This figure is also used in Isa 50.9.

For the decree from of old is, “You must surely die!”: The decree from of old is the same “covenant of Hades” found in verse 12; as in that verse, the Revised Standard Version footnote here is unnecessary. Good News Translation expresses it as “The ancient law.” Whether it is conceived of as a covenant, a decree or a law, ben Sira is speaking of the one thing that can be said of every human being; we all die. The content of the decree, You must surely die, obviously recalls Gen 2.17, although the Hebrew text of our verse is not a quotation of the verse in Genesis; the structure is the same but a different word for “die” is used. Good News Translation translates this decree in the first person, saying “we must die.” It would have been stronger as “all of us must die.” New Jerusalem Bible translates it in the third person with “Everyone must die.” Any of these renderings can work effectively. It should only be noted that this is a strong and forceful statement, and conveying that should be the translator’s goal. Luís Alonso Schökel achieves this with a sense of no-nonsense abruptness by rendering the whole line as “because the eternal decree is ‘You have to die.’ ”

An alternative model for this verse is:

• Our bodies are like our clothes—they wear out. This obeys the eternal [or, ancient] law that says, “You must [or, have to] die.”

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.