A man who pricks an eye will make tears fall: Pricking the eye refers to the kind of minor injury we get when we accidentally touch our eye with some object. Such an action does not make tears fall literally, but it makes them flow (so Good News Translation). New Revised Standard Version translates “brings tears.” The Greek does not actually say that someone hurts his own eye, but this is to be assumed, even though it makes the parallelism more difficult with the next line, where someone clearly hurts another person. It is not necessary to bring this out, however, and Good News Translation makes no effort. For this line New English Bible does well with “Hurt the eye and tears will flow.”

And one who pricks the heart makes it show feeling: One who pricks the heart is not to be taken literally, of course. The reference is to hurting a person’s feelings, doing or saying something to make another person feel wounded in his heart/spirit. Good News Translation says “you hurt a person deeply.” The Greek uses the same verb for pricks in each line of this verse, first with an eye as the object and then with a heart as the object. It will be helpful if translators can find a word in their language that will work in both situations, and thus tie the two lines together. It is hard to do in English; Good News Translation does not try, and as a result the connection of the two lines is not as clear as it might be. Box and Oesterley speaks of “A wound in the eye” and “a (heart)-wound.” New American Bible uses “jabs” and “pierces,” which at least refer to the same type of action. “Hurt,” as used by New English Bible, is probably the best as a general term, although when it is applied to the eye it could mean any kind of injury, even serious ones. Makes it show feeling means that when you say or do something hurtful to someone, that person’s feelings come to the surface, feelings or emotions that perhaps that person was not aware of. These feelings are just as automatic, just as unavoidable, as tears when the eye is injured. Contemporary English Version says “they will show deep pain.”

It may be helpful here to look at this verse in a literal translation: “He who pricks an eye draws tears, and he who pricks a heart reveals feeling.” Good News Translation translates it in the second person. It would also work in this form: “Stick something in your eye and tears will flow. Hurt a person deeply….” Here is one possible approach that keeps expresses the parallelism better:

• Hurt your eye and you make tears appear; hurt someone in the heart [or, spirit] and you make their feelings show.

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.