Fodder and a stick and burdens for an ass: Fodder is food the farmer gives livestock, as opposed to grass they might find for themselves in the pasture. Ben Sira says here that you do three things with a donkey (ass). You give it food. You whip it when it will not obey. And you put loads on its back. That’s just what you do with donkeys.

Bread and discipline and work for a servant: In this context ben Sira is not talking about a servant who works for wages. He is referring to a “slave” (Good News Translation). There are three things you do with a slave. You give him food (bread). You whip him when he will not obey. And you give him work to do. That’s just what you do with slaves.

Notice that the terms in the two lines of this verse are closely parallel. Good News Translation‘s restructuring involves more words and a more complicated grammar, but it is clear, and the parallel structure is preserved. Keeping the parallel structure is desirable here, since it clearly shows that ben Sira thinks of slaves in the same way he thinks of donkeys. An alternative model is:

• You feed your donkey, you beat it with a stick, and you place a load on its back. Slaves are like that—you should feed them, discipline [or, punish] them, and give them work to do.

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.