The Old Testament writings attributed to Solomon in Ecclesiastes bear little similarity to the teachings of Jesus of Sirach in Ecclesiasticus, found in the Apocrypha. Similar themes run throughout both books, but the tone and organizational tendencies vary sharply from one writing to the other, reflecting the uniquely inspired thoughts and opinions of the authors. Solomon and Jesus of Sirach take up vastly different perspectives on such ideas as wisdom and divine justice, to such an extent that the moral conclusions of the two writings cannot really be synthesized to form a consistent whole. Ecclesiastes and Sirach differ most in their attitudes towards divine justice. In both books, the narrator sets up a divinely sanctioned framework in order to explain the vagaries of human fate and fortune. These frameworks differ vastly from Ecclesiastes to Sirach, mostly in respect to their treatment of moral causality and the efficacy of divine justice.
The wisdom code established in Ecclesiasticus operates under a framework of ethical causality, sanctioned and enforced by God, but ultimately driven by the human choice to do well or to sin. This system understands personal fortune as a further “outworking” of covenant theology, that ancestral quid pro quo. Throughout Sirach, the editor insists that human beings possess a significant degree of control over their fate, because they can determine their own actions, knowing how God will judge them. The editor relates in Sirach 15.20 “He [God] has not commanded anyone to be wicked, and He has not given anyone permission to sin.” Thus human beings can choose to act in a way pleasing to the Lord. The editor states with conviction that merit is causally linked to reward, and transgression to ruin. Furthermore God alone accomplishes all of this, and he does so impeccably, “revealing your secrets” (Sir. 1.30) in order to pass judgment. The entirety of Sirach stands to laud the infallibility and the equity of God’s reaction to human deeds, of the righteous or the depraved. Ecclesiasticus 7.1 begins “Do no evil, and evil will never overtake you.” Here the editor affirms that God’s justice is utterly fair and consistent, and that misfortune will never “overtake” the righteous. In Sirach 2.6, the editor states that obedience will be repaid favorably: “trust in him, and he will help you.” Warnings of divine punishment balance out such positive reinforcement. The editor relates in Sirach 7.16: “the punishment for the ungodly is fire and worms.” Here, human actions and divine reactions stand as clear causal pairs.
The editor of Sirach does address the concern that God does not always execute justice in a manner that is apparent to human beings. Delayed fulfillment is provided as the solution, as the editors remark that “gold is tested in fire” (Sir. 2.5), and for sinners’ cases, that “the Lord is slow to anger” (Sir. 5.4). The editor does not comment specifically on the length of such a delay, but the general tone of the writing strongly suggests that the delay would not diminish the glory of a redemption or magnitude of retribution, for praise of the merits of fearing God always surrounds and engulfs any discourse on delayed fulfillment.
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon doubts the existence of true moral causality. He notes that “the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked” (Ecc. 9.2). The “evil” of this final reality is difficult to reconcile with the notion of divine justice, for it does not seem just that God should allow the God-fearing and the sinners alike to endure an identical final fate. Solomon observes that God sometimes allows “the righteous to perish in their righteousness” (Ecc. 7.15). Salient righteousness offends not God but the wickedness of man. Thus it would seem that here, motivated by his own moral insecurities, man, rather than God is given to exact unfair punishment on the particularly righteous – and God abides in this inequity by allowing it to take place. In this situation, one who has done no evil is overtaken by evil, all before the eyes of God. He can punish the offenders, but he cannot rectify the injustice in respect to the victim, who received no reward for his merit and now dwells in Sheol. Here, Solomon observes the problems inherent in a theology of perfect divine justice.
Instead of rigid divine justice, Solomon observes a temporal, rather than a morally dependent framework of fates predetermined by God, which man must learn to accept if he is to survive happily within. The editor outlines this framework in Ecclesiastes 2.3, as he relates: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Here Solomon provides an alternative to the covenant based understanding of varying personal fortune. In this model, God seems to have ordered life in a way that does not depend on human action. Solomon insists that every state of being exists in its own proper time, which God has long ago determined. He orders the multitude of “times” in opposing pairs, so as to symbolize an entire spectrum of personal states, from the favorable, to the neutral, to the unfavorable, present and rhythmically dynamic during the life of a human being. In such a way, Solomon portrays man not as an agent who can significantly alter his fortune through righteous, God-pleasing behavior, but as a humble being who must survive within a primal order of times and fates, established by God at the time of creation.
There is a tension in Ecclesiastes between Solomon’s observations of rampant injustice, and his repeated assertion that God will execute justice. Solomon, like Jesus of Sirach, acknowledges that this execution is not necessarily speedy. He relates “God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work” (Ecc. 3.17). Thus the expression of divine justice also fits into the same temporal framework that Solomon discusses in Ecclesiastes 3.1-12. Nevertheless, Solomon insists that God will, in His time, judge human beings for their actions, even those that they have kept secret. Regarding this subject, the main difference between Ecclesiastes and Sirach lies in the tone of their discussion of divine justice. Solomon uses negative examples only, speaking of the punishment that lies for the wicked and the ungodly, as in Ecclesiastes 8.13. For all that he has observed, Solomon never speaks of a divine reward for meritorious deeds. Rather, he chooses to depict a sluggish and strictly punitive divine justice.
Neither of the texts speak unequivocally about the efficacy of divine justice, as both acknowledge that divine retribution can be subject to indefinite delay. However their vastly different tones and perspectives indicate that the editor of Sirach took great solace in his understanding of the framework of divine justice, while the Solomon found only a distant comfort in the understanding that he gleaned from his venerable wisdom. Furthermore, the evils of human injustice encroach upon this bare comfort, just as Solomon’s lamentations of human transgressions surround and permeate his language pertaining to divine retribution. In Sirach, the opposite is true. The book is tightly and uniformly organized into descriptions of causal pairs, usually in the form of a human deed followed by its divinely sanctioned consequent.