Will you not leave the fruit of your labors to another, and what you acquired by toil to be divided by lot?: The implied answer to this question is “Yes.” Some day each of us will die and what we leave behind us, things we have earned by working for them, will be left behind for others to use. This can be translated as a statement, as Good News Translation has done with “Some day all that you have worked for will be divided up and given to others.”
In Box and Oesterley’s comments on divided by lot, we learn that in the author’s day a man’s heirs would divide his possessions by lot. This cultural fact is not essential to the meaning, however. What matters is that there is a contrast here between how you acquire your possessions (hard work) and how others will acquire them (without work). Good News Translation says nothing about how a person’s possessions are distributed after death, but a subtle idiomatic usage conveys the essential idea. Good News Translation says the possessions are “divided up.” In English this implies that the goods are distributed without a lot of thought being given to it. Had Good News Translation said the possessions are “divided,” it would have implied that some care was taken in the distribution. The author’s point is that your possessions meant something to you; you worked hard for them. But after you die, others come by them cheaply, and they mean little to them. Translators need to find some way of conveying the idea that the heirs come by these goods at much less cost than was required of the person who earned them by hard work. Contemporary English Version‘s model in the active voice appears to convey this meaning:
• because after you have gone,
others will divide up everything
you worked so hard to get.
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.
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