In verses 9-13 the author has been warning against speaking out of ignorance. He now turns to warning against speaking out of malice. This is a good place for a paragraph break.

Do not be called a slanderer: The Greek word for slanderer literally means “whisperer,” and is better rendered “gossip,” as in Good News Translation and New English Bible. This line means, of course, that you are not to speak in such a way that people can call you a gossip. Good News Translation says “Don’t get a reputation for being a gossip.”

And do not lie in ambush with your tongue: This means that we are not to wait for a chance to say something cutting, something to hurt someone’s feelings or damage their reputation. Good News Translation “don’t tell tales that will hurt people” misses the idea of planning. A better rendering would be “and don’t wait for chances to say hurtful things” or “and don’t think up hurtful things to say to people when you get the chance.” New English Bible says “or lay traps with your tongue.” The figure of setting traps may work very well in some situations.

For shame comes to the thief, and severe condemnation to the double-tongued: A comparison is being made here, and Good News Translation does well to bring it out with its “Just as … so…” construction. Good News Translation renders double-tongued as “liars.” This is not wrong, but duplicity is probably more on target. Duplicity is a special variety of deceit in which a person says one thing to one person and something else to another, the kind of thing warned against in verse 9. The English idiom for it is “two-faced,” or “talking out of both sides of your mouth.” “People who are deceitful and unreliable” comes close to the meaning.

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.