A harlot is regarded as spittle, and a married woman as a tower of death to her lovers: Is regarded is repeated in the second line in the Greek text. Good News Translation ignores it in both lines. To her lovers is literally “to those who use her.” Several scholars compare the tower of death to the tower in 2 Macc 13.5, where criminals were put to death. Possibly, the writer is aware of a custom in the Zoroastrian religion practiced in Persia. In the practice of this religion the bodies of the dead would be exposed on top of special towers, so that vultures would consume the flesh. These were called “the towers of silence.” Perhaps New English Bible has this in mind by translating the second line of this verse as “a married woman as a mortuary for her lovers.” A big part of the problem here is that this verse seems to be parallel in form to verses 23-25, which have the same form; each of these verses has as a first line a thought about a bad woman and as a second line a thought about a good woman. In all formal respects, verse 22 is perfectly parallel to those verses, and we would expect in the second line a positive thought about a married woman. Perhaps we do have it. The Greek word translated a married woman more literally means “a woman under the authority of a husband.” If this means “a woman who is faithful to her husband,” this verse then neatly fits the pattern of the following three verses. What follows is a model of this verse with this interpretation, a model that also abandons the metaphor of tower of death:

• A prostitute is no better than spit, people say, but a faithful wife means death to any man who tries to seduce her.

“People say” translates is regarded.

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.