A person may make a slip without intending it is literally “There is one who slips and not from the soul.” The meaning is just what Revised Standard Version says. People sometimes do or say the wrong thing with no bad intent at all. So when we hear a bad report about someone, we should bear this in mind. A slip is a mistake that a person ordinarily would not make. Good News Translation‘s translation here is good. It limits the slip to something said rather than done (“A person may say something carelessly…”). Even though this is not specified in the Greek of this line, the next line makes it clear that thoughtless speech is meant.

Who has never sinned with his tongue?: The implied answer to this rhetorical question is “No one.” We have all sinned from time to time by saying things we should not have said. Good News Translation words it as a statement: “Everyone has sinned in this way at one time or another.” Since Good News Translation translates “say something” in the first line, it can render with his tongue in this line as “in this way.”

Contemporary English Version has a helpful model for this verse:

• We are all guilty
of saying things
that we didn’t really mean.

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.