What does Ecclesiasticus Chapter 36 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The chapter’s wording is retained in order with explicit attribution. Edition headings and annotations remain distinct from the chapter’s speech. Requests, comparisons and warnings are preserved without invented outcomes.

Chapter breakdown

Ecclesiasticus 36 opens with communal petitions for mercy, divine power, signs, judgment against enemies and gathered Jacob. The speakers ask that nations know God, that Jerusalem and Israel receive mercy, Sion receive divine words and the people glory, and earlier prophets be vindicated. The prayers remain requests. Gathering does not specify relocation to Jerusalem or redistribution of ancestral property; the passage asks that God inherit his people.

The concluding comparisons concern food, discernment and companionship. The belly receives meat, but one food is better than another; taste tests venison as a wise heart detects false words. A perverse heart causes grief and experienced people resist it. The woman-and-man comparison has a separate edition explanation, retained as commentary. Beauty cheers, a healing and merciful tongue benefits her husband, and a good wife begins possession, help and rest. An absent hedge leaves property exposed, and lacking a wife brings wandering and mourning. The final question asks who trusts a restless man moving like a robber; it does not identify a particular unmarried man as a thief.

The story inside

Opening: The chapter’s wording is retained in order with explicit attribution. Development: Edition headings and annotations remain distinct from the chapter’s speech. Conclusion: Requests, comparisons and warnings are preserved without invented outcomes.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The chapter’s wording is retained in order with explicit attribution.
2
Edition headings and annotations remain distinct from the chapter’s speech.
3
Requests, comparisons and warnings are preserved without invented outcomes.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 76867–76872
36:1. Have mercy upon us, O God of all, and behold us, and shew us the light of thy mercies: 36:2. And send thy fear upon the nations, that have not sought after thee: that they may know that there is no God beside thee, and that they may shew forth thy wonders.
Lines 76904–76908
36:14. Have mercy on thy people, upon whom thy name is invoked: and upon Israel, whom thou hast raised up to be thy firstborn. 36:15. Have mercy on Jerusalem, the city which thou hast sanctified, the city of thy rest.
Lines 76934–76936
A woman will receive every man.... That is, any man that her parents propose to her to marry, though she does not like him, but marries in obedience to her parents, who make the choice for her.
Lines 76944–76948
36:26. He that possesseth a good wife, beginneth a possession: she is a help like to himself, and a pillar of rest. 36:27. Where there is no hedge, the possession shall be spoiled: and where there is no wife, he mourneth that is in want.