If calamity befalls you, you will find him there ahead of you: Good News Translation “trouble” is an adequate translation of the Greek word rendered calamity in Revised Standard Version. The author is not talking of some terrible disaster (so Contemporary English Version), just misfortune of any kind. That’s the only chance your enemy needs to rush in and take advantage of you. Good News Translation “you will find him waiting” does not mean he is waiting as if for an appointment; it is an idiomatic way of saying you will find him there ahead of you. Revised Standard Version idiomatically inserts there; it corresponds to nothing in the Greek. Some translators will find it helpful to combine ahead of you with the following line and say something like “If you have trouble of some kind, your enemies will stay near you pretending to help you….”

And while pretending to help you, he will trip you by the heel: Trip you by the heel is a figure of speech meaning to cause you to fall into his trap. Good News Translation “trip you up” is a common English idiom. The point is that your enemy’s eagerness to help you is just as hypocritical as his words and his tears. He has no intention of actually helping you; he wants to destroy you, to bring you down. For the whole line Contemporary English Version says “they pretend to help but pull you down instead.”

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.