Do no evil, and evil will never befall you. Stay away from wrong, and it will turn away from you: Ben Sira and the writer of Ecclesiastes (see, for example, Eccl 8.14) would not agree on things. The main problem with these two verses, which are two lines with similar meaning, is that they are not true. They exhibit wishful thinking. But ben Sira was not stupid, and we cannot believe that he meant these lines to be taken literally. They are hyperbole, overstatement in order to make a point. This kind of thing would be necessary to reduce a complex thought to the strict limits of what could be said in a proverb. By their nature proverbs are memorable capsules of truth, but they do not claim to state the whole truth. We do ben Sira no injustice to suggest that what he means is the following: If you don’t want bad things to happen to you, the best thing you can do to avoid them is not to do anything bad yourself; that is the best defense. This paraphrase is not suggested as a model for translation. Even if we disagree with what ben Sira is saying, we must let him say it. Good News Translation sees these two verses as variations on exactly the same theme, and offers only one statement to cover both verses. It is hard to find fault with this, and translators may use Good News Translation as a model. If we wish to have two separate statements, we only need to find a new way of saying in verse 2 what was said in verse 1; for example:

• If you never do evil, evil will never harm you. If you never do wrong, no wrong will ever happen to you.

However, it is also possible to make clear whom we do evil against; for example:

• If you never do evil things to people, you will be safe. If you are never unjust toward others, bad things will not happen to you.

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.