Death is better than a miserable life, and eternal rest than chronic sickness: Good News Translation has reordered this verse, combining Death with eternal rest (“dead, asleep forever”) and miserable life with chronic sickness (“the misery of chronic illness”). By eternal rest, the author is not speaking of an afterlife in heaven; he simply means being dead. The phrase eternal rest, as the Revised Standard Version footnote indicates, is not found in some Greek manuscripts. The Hebrew verifies that it is original; the Handbook believes that no footnote is necessary. Chronic sickness refers to an illness that lasts over a long period of time, as opposed to one that comes on quickly and lasts a short while, after which the patient either recovers or dies. A chronic sickness is not necessarily fatal (for example, malaria), but it may be (for example, cancer). Good News Translation “than to live in the misery of chronic illness” may be expanded to “than to suffer terrible pain from a chronic illness [or, an illness that won’t heal].”

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.