A dejected mind, a gloomy face, and a wounded heart are caused by an evil wife: To wound or break someone’s heart means to cause a person who loves you great sorrow by not living up to his expectations of you. If the parallel expression in the next line is a guide, ben Sira defines the evil wife as someone who does not make her husband happy. Good News Translation provides a good model for this line, except that evil may be better rendered as “malicious” or “cruel” (see the comments on verse 16). A slight change to Contemporary English Version‘s translation provides a helpful model for the first part of this verse:

• A malicious wife brings no happiness
to her husband;
instead, she makes him sad
and depressed;
she breaks his heart,

Drooping hands and weak knees are caused by the wife who does not make her husband happy: Good News Translation‘s form, “Show me X and I will show you Y,” is a good English idiom. A better model here might be “A man whose wife does not make him happy will be unsure of himself [weak knees], and unable to accomplish much [Drooping hands].”

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.