A fool will say, “I have no friend: A fool is literal, but Good News Translation‘s opening, “Then that fool,” is perceptive. It pictures this verse as describing the attitude of the fool of verses 13-15 (“that fool”) when he discovers what people really think of him (“Then that fool”). He has been described by Good News Translation as “A stupid person” (verse 13), but in this climactic verse, the insulting noun is used (“that fool”). This pathetic fellow, who has given little and criticized loudly, who has lent things and then wanted them back, all the while thinking he was being so nice, can’t understand why he has no friends, and wails, I have no friend. Good News Translation translates this “Nobody likes me.” By making “Nobody” the subject of this clause rather than I, Good News Translation has the fool shift the blame away from himself to the other people. Contemporary English Version uses indirect speech for this line: “Fools think they have no friends.” This sounds flat and colorless.

And there is no gratitude for my good deeds: As we have seen (verses 13-15), this person has really not done any good deeds, but he thinks of them that way. Good News Translation “what I do for them” is equivalent to my good deeds. Using direct discourse here will be a dramatic and natural way to translate in most languages; for example, “No one thanks me for the good things I do!”

Those who eat my bread speak unkindly: Those who eat my bread can be taken fairly literally to mean “those who eat at my table,” “the guests in my home,” but Good News Translation takes it more broadly to refer to those for whom the fool has done all the nice things mentioned (see the comments on courtesies in verse 13), so it says “They’ll take what I give them.” “What I give them” would include not only food (bread), but anything mentioned in verses 13-15. Speak unkindly is literally “are evil with tongue.” The Greek does not say that the recipients speak about the fool “behind his back” (so Good News Translation). However, in this situation folks are going to do their talking behind the fool’s back (that is, when he is not present), and when people talk, at least in English, about someone “behind their back,” they are not speaking kindly. A conservative model for this line might be “People eat food that I set before them, and then say ugly things about me.”

Concerning the last line of this verse, there is an important textual note to make for translators who have the Greek text before them: be aware that both Rahlfs and Ziegler have emended the text to say “those who eat his bread are evil with tongue.” This is not what the manuscripts say (they say “my bread”), and it is hard to imagine why this emendation has been made. (The basis for it is the Latin, but it really makes no sense without emending the previous two lines to agree with the Latin also; in the Latin the fool is not quoted at all.) Translators are urged to avoid it, and read the text translated by both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation (also New Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, Revised English Bible, Box and Oesterley).

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.