Do not be ensnared by a woman’s beauty: The Greek verb here does not literally mean ensnared or “trapped.” It is literally “fall forward,” as if stumbling and falling flat on your face. Good News Translation “Never lose your head” is good idiomatic English. So is New Jerusalem Bible “Do not be taken in.” Most languages will have an expression for a man making a fool of himself because of a woman. An alternative model for this line is “Don’t let the beauty of a woman make you fall in love with her.”

And do not desire a woman for her possessions: There are textual problems here. (1) Some Greek manuscripts read simply “and do not desire a woman.” This makes sense in the context. It does not mean “do not get married,” it means “don’t set your heart on some particular woman.” Some translations render the line this way; for example, New Jerusalem Bible has “never lose your head over a woman,” and New English Bible says “or set your heart on possessing her.” (2) Other Greek manuscripts read “and do not desire a woman for her beauty” (see the Revised Standard Version footnote). The problem with this reading is that two different Greek words for “beauty” are used then in the verse; this leads to the suspicion that the scribes felt something was missing from “and do not desire a woman,” and guessed as to what belonged there. They simply filled in something to parallel the meaning of the first line. (3) The Hebrew says “and do not desire what she has.” Revised Standard Version adopts this reading, as does Good News Translation. It should be pointed out that the Hebrew does not actually use a word meaning possessions or “wealth”; this is an interpretation, but in the light of the next verse, it is on good grounds. This is the course we urge translators to take. Good News Translation uses the idiom “win a woman” here. This means to succeed in getting a woman to marry you. It is a reasonable interpretation of the literal desire a woman. The footnote in Good News Translation here is a better model than that in Revised Standard Version: “Hebrew because she is wealthy; Greek does not have these words.” An alternative model for this line is “or don’t desire [or, want to have] a woman because she has many possessions.”

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.