Do not lift a weight beyond your strength: An object too heavy for a person to lift may still be lifted, although not without injury. Ben Sira’s point in the first two lines of this verse is that if you associate with people higher than your own social class you will be hurt. Good News Translation “Don’t try to lift something too heavy for you” does not express correctly the meaning of the Greek here. A better rendering is “Don’t try to lift something that you are not strong enough to lift.”

Nor associate with a man mightier and richer than you: Mightier refers to high social status rather than bodily strength. The author is not saying that we should have no contact at all with “people who are richer and more powerful” (Good News Translation) than we are. He is saying that we should not try to think of ourselves as their social equals and seek out their company. Good News Translation “keep company with” is a modern English equivalent of associate with. An alternative model for this line is “Don’t try to be friends with people who are richer and more powerful than you.”

How can the clay pot associate with the iron kettle?: New English Bible “How can a [clay] jug be friends with a [iron] kettle?” is a good model if translators are sure that readers will understand the irony here, that it will not be heard as ridiculous. Good News Translation envisions an actual situation where the pot and the kettle might be placed beside each other, and frames this rhetorical question as a statement: “You cannot keep a clay pot next to an iron kettle.” The phrases clay pot and iron kettle translate two words in the Greek, designating two everyday ancient objects. Pots and jugs are often made of unbreakable materials today, so readers will probably need to be told that this pot or jug was made of clay, and the kettle was made of iron or some other metal, in order for the next line to make sense.

The pot will strike against it, and will itself be broken: New English Bible expresses the meaning of this line well with “If they knock together, the one [pot] will be smashed.” New Jerusalem Bible is similar with “It [the pot] will only break when they bang against each other.” Perhaps we may say “Sooner or later the pot will hit up against the kettle and break” or “Sooner or later the clay pot will be knocked against the metal kettle and break.” Another possibility for the last two lines of this verse is “You don’t put a clay pot next to an iron kettle, because if one hits the other, the pot will break.”

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.