What is brighter than the sun? Yet its light fails: What is brighter than the sun? is a rhetorical question with the expected answer “Nothing.” According to the Revised Standard Version footnote, light fails may also be rendered “suffers eclipse,” which is surely the intended meaning here. Good News Translation offers a good approach for this line, incorporating the image of a solar eclipse while explaining its meaning, but Contemporary English Version “If a thick dark cloud can hide the bright rays of the sun” is also possible. So an alternative model for this line is “Nothing is brighter than the sun, but even the sun’s light can be blocked [by clouds].”

So flesh and blood devise evil: Flesh and blood refers to humanity. The Revised Standard Version rendering of this line is literal; Good News Translation is expansive, but provides direction. Perhaps we could translate “So evil casts a shadow over human thoughts,” “So evil can just as easily darken our minds” (similarly Contemporary English Version), or even “So evil can cause our thoughts to become dark and twisted.”

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.