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Sirach 42:15-43:33 - Let All Creation Praise the Lord

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After the anxious scrutiny of household reputation, Ben Sira looks up. He will remember the Lord’s works and declare what he has seen. Sun, moon, stars, snow, wind, sea, and living creatures fill the poem, yet its deepest recognition is how little human beings have seen. Wonder enlarges the heart without making it master of the world. The ending gives all our strength to praise while confessing that God exceeds everything we can say.

The World Before the One Who Knows the Heart (Sirach 42:15-25)

15 I will now remember the works of the Lord, and declare the things that I have seen: In the words of the Lord are his works. 16 The sun that giveth light looketh upon all things, and the work thereof is full of the glory of the Lord. 17 The Lord hath not given power to the saints to declare all his marvellous works, which the Almighty Lord firmly settled, that whatsoever is might be established for his glory. 18 He seeketh out the deep, and the heart, and considereth their crafty devices: for the Lord knoweth all that can be known, and he beholdeth the signs of the world, 19 declaring the things that are past, and for to come, and revealing the steps of hidden things. 20 No thought escapeth him, neither any word is hidden from him. 21 He hath garnished the excellent works of his wisdom, and he is from everlasting to everlasting: unto him may nothing be added, neither can he be diminished, and he hath no need of any counsellor. 22 Oh how desirable are all his works! and that a man may see even to a spark. 23 All these things live and remain for ever for all uses, and they are all obedient. 24 All things are double one against another: and he hath made nothing imperfect. 25 One thing establisheth the good of another: and who shall be filled with beholding his glory?

The Lord’s works exist through His word. The sun’s light reveals a world already filled with His glory, and the poet’s remembering becomes an act of thanksgiving. Yet even the saints cannot declare all His marvels. Holiness does not confer exhaustive knowledge. A person can truly know and love the Creator while remaining at the beginning of understanding what He has made.

The poem moves from visible light to the hidden heart. God searches the deep and knows thoughts as well as the order of the world. The eye that marvels at a sunrise belongs to a person equally visible to Him. This joins contemplation to repentance: admiration of creation should not become a way to avoid truth about ourselves. At the same time, the One who knows the anxious or ashamed heart is no less wise than the One who sustains the heavens. Nothing hidden in a human life is beyond His attention.

The contrasts and pairs at the ending describe a creation whose parts have their place and relation. Their goodness supports one another. This is a confession of the Creator’s wisdom, not a command to call every present injury perfect or to deny creation’s groaning. Genesis 1 teaches the goodness of what God makes; Romans 8:18-23 also recognizes a world awaiting liberation from corruption. Christian praise can confess both. The glimpse of a spark is enough to awaken longing, but it is never the whole fire of divine glory.

The Lights That Teach Reverence (Sirach 43:1-12)

1 The pride of the height, the clear firmament, the beauty of heaven, with his glorious shew; 2 the sun when it appeareth, declaring at his rising a marvellous instrument, the work of the most High: 3 at noon it parcheth the country, and who can abide the burning heat thereof? 4 A man blowing a furnace is in works of heat, but the sun burneth the mountains three times more; breathing out fiery vapours, and sending forth bright beams, it dimmeth the eyes. 5 Great is the Lord that made it; and at his commandment it runneth hastily. 6 He made the moon also to serve in her season for a declaration of times, and a sign of the world. 7 From the moon is the sign of feasts, a light that decreaseth in her perfection. 8 The month is called after her name, increasing wonderfully in her changing, being an instrument of the armies above, shining in the firmament of heaven; 9 the beauty of heaven, the glory of the stars, an ornament giving light in the highest places of the Lord. 10 At the commandment of the Holy One they will stand in their order, and never faint in their watches. 11 Look upon the rainbow, and praise him that made it; very beautiful it is in the brightness thereof. 12 It compasseth the heaven about with a glorious circle, and the hands of the most High have bended it.

The sun is glorious, useful, and too powerful for a person to endure at full strength. Ben Sira compares its heat with a furnace, then directs praise beyond it to the Lord who made it. This is the poem’s discipline of sight: receive the creature’s beauty, recognize its limits and power, and bless its Maker. The sun is neither a god nor merely a convenient resource. It is a work whose existence witnesses to another.

The moon marks seasons and feasts; the stars keep their watches. Created time can call human beings out of self-absorption into a shared rhythm of worship. The reader need not turn the poem into a modern astronomical treatise or import every detail of an ancient calendar into the Church’s practice. The spiritual claim is simpler and deeper: we do not make the light, order the heavens, or invent the time given to us. Our freedom is exercised within a world already received.

The rainbow completes this section with an explicit instruction to look and praise the One who made it. Genesis 9:12-17 gives the bow its covenant setting as a sign of God’s promise; Revelation 4:3 places a rainbow around the throne in a vision of heavenly worship. These are biblical companions rather than a claim that Ben Sira has described John’s vision in advance. The beauty that catches the eye can become a reminder that the Creator’s glory and mercy exceed the passing moment. Attention is rescued from mere consumption when it ends in thanksgiving.

Snow, Storm, and the Life of the Deep (Sirach 43:13-26)

13 By his commandment he maketh the snow to fall apace, and sendeth swiftly the lightnings of his judgment. 14 Through this the treasures are opened: and clouds fly forth as fowls. 15 By his great power he maketh the clouds firm, and the hailstones are broken small. 16 At his sight the mountains are shaken, and at his will the south wind bloweth. 17 The noise of the thunder maketh the earth to tremble: so doth the northern storm and the whirlwind: as birds flying he scattereth the snow, and the falling down thereof is as the lighting of grasshoppers: 18 the eye marvelleth at the beauty of the whiteness thereof, and the heart is astonished at the raining of it. 19 The hoarfrost also as salt he poureth on the earth, and being congealed, it becometh sharp peaks. 20 When the cold north wind bloweth, and the water is congealed into ice, it abideth upon every gathering together of water, and clotheth the water as with a breastplate. 21 It devoureth the mountains, and burneth the wilderness, and consumeth the grass as fire. 22 A present remedy of all is a mist coming speedily: a dew coming after heat refresheth. 23 By his counsel he appeaseth the deep, and planteth islands therein. 24 They that sail on the sea tell of the danger thereof; and when we hear it with our ears, we marvel thereat. 25 For therein be strange and wondrous works, variety of all kinds of beasts, the race of whales. 26 By him the end of them hath prosperous success, and by his word all things consist.

Snow falls like birds and settles like grasshoppers; frost lies like salt; ice clothes water as a breastplate. The poet watches closely enough to let one created thing help describe another. This is delight trained by attention. The cold can also devour vegetation and burn like fire, while mist and dew bring relief. Creation’s beauty includes powers that exceed human comfort. Reverence makes room for this truth without treating people harmed by weather as personally condemned.

The sea extends the poem beyond the speaker’s own sight. Sailors tell of dangers and creatures that land dwellers know by hearing. Wonder can receive truthful testimony without pretending to have seen everything for itself. The whales and the hidden varieties of life enlarge the imagination beyond the world arranged for our immediate use. The final statement places all these things beneath the sustaining word of God. John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16-17 give the Christian confession: the eternal Word through whom creation came to be also holds it together. Created things are dependent upon Him, not pieces of His divine being.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

The nightly Coptic Midnight Praise gives this kind of attention a communal voice. Its Third Hoos, or canticle, is the praise of the Three Holy Youths, calling the works of the Lord to bless Him. The Fourth Hoos sings Psalms 148-150 (NKJV 148-150), bringing the heavens, living creatures, peoples, and every breath into praise. H.G. Abba Hedra’s Praises Explained identifies these canticles and their place in the daily psalmody; the hymn texts themselves name sun and moon, rain and dew, snow and ice, seas and whales.1

This is a concrete resonance with Sirach’s poem, not an appointment of Sirach 43 as a reading or a claim that the canticles originated from it. The Three Youths praise amid danger, and the Fourth Hoos gives the voice of praise to all creation. Coptic worship therefore teaches us to do with our lips what Sirach teaches with our eyes. The world is received before the Creator, and our voice joins a praise larger than our private moods. The person who cannot command the storm can still belong to the Lord whom the storm cannot overthrow.

Praise Beyond the Reach of Our Words (Sirach 43:27-33)

27 We may speak much, and yet come short; wherefore in sum, he is all. 28 How shall we be able to magnify him? for he is great above all his works. 29 The Lord is terrible and very great, and marvellous is his power. 30 When ye glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as ye can; for even yet will he far exceed: and when ye exalt him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary; for ye can never go far enough. 31 Who hath seen him, that he might tell us? and who can magnify him as he is? 32 There are yet hid greater things than these be, for we have seen but a few of his works. 33 For the Lord hath made all things; and to the godly hath he given wisdom.

The short declaration in verse 27 that He is all is immediately followed by the confession that God is great above all His works. The second statement governs the first. Ben Sira is gathering the whole account into the Lord who is its source and object of praise, not identifying God with the universe. Pantheism, the claim that God and all things are identical, would undo the distinction the poem keeps making between the Maker and what He has made. First Corinthians 15:28 and Colossians 3:11 likewise speak of God’s all-embracing reign and Christ’s fullness without turning creatures into the divine essence.

Human speech falls short, but the response is neither silence born of indifference nor an attempt to exaggerate our knowledge. We are to give our strength to praise. To glorify God is to confess and rejoice in His glory, not to increase something lacking in Him. The more attentively the poem describes creation, the more deeply it recognizes that the unseen exceeds the seen. Humility is the proper fruit of genuine knowledge.

The question of who has seen God and can tell us finds a decisive Christian answer in John 1:18. The Only-begotten Son makes the Father known. The Son is eternal God with the Father, not a creature who happened to acquire better information. In His Incarnation He truly becomes man and reveals the Father within human life. This revelation is real, while God’s fullness still exceeds our comprehension. Christian theology therefore becomes doxology, truthful speech flowering into worship. We know the One to whom we pray because He has made Himself known; we never reduce Him to the size of our explanation.

Gems from the Fathers 💎

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria moves from the order of creation to the Word who reveals the Father. His argument in Against the Heathen 45.1 is a thematic companion to Sirach’s final question: “For just as by looking up to the heaven and seeing its order and the light of the stars, it is possible to infer the Word Who ordered these things, so by beholding the Word of God, one needs must behold also God His Father, proceeding from Whom He is rightly called His Father’s Interpreter and Messenger.”2 Athanasius does not make nature itself divine. The works direct us to the Word; the Word makes His Father known. That distinction lets wonder mature into Christian prayer rather than remain an admiration with no one to thank.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Give attention back to the world God made. Walk outside once this week without filling the time with a recording or a stream of messages. Notice one ordinary thing carefully: the changing light, a leaf, the moon, or the movement of water. Let it lead to a short thanksgiving addressed to the Creator. This is no attempt to produce a special feeling. It is a recovery of the ability to receive what is given before deciding how it can be used.

Let praise include what you cannot control. Name a concern that makes you reach for constant information or repeated reassurance. Carry it into a few minutes of prayer with Psalm 148 (NKJV 148), or with the Third Hoos if you know it. Praise does not make the concern unreal, and practical duties remain. It puts the concern within a world held by the Lord. The snow, storm, and deep are beyond our command, but they are not beyond His sustaining word.

Make gratitude responsible. Choose one way to treat a created gift with greater care: waste less food, use water attentively, repair something still useful, or help provide a necessity for another person. Thanksgiving becomes thin when it praises beauty while disregarding the people and creatures affected by our habits. A modest act of care can join the eye’s delight to the hand’s obedience, without pretending that one gesture will master the world’s wounds.

Receive revelation without trying to possess God. When a question remains unanswered, resist both an invented certainty and the thought that God must therefore be absent. Return to Christ in the Gospel. Let one act or word of His teach you whom you address in prayer. Before sleep, look again at the sky if you can, and offer a blessing even if you see only clouds. The Lord exceeds our words, yet He has come near. We may rest within His faithfulness while the praise remains unfinished.

Footnotes

  1. H.G. Abba Hedra, Bishop of Aswan, Praises Explained, Third and Fourth Hoos and the fixed order of daily psalmody. Hymn texts: The Third Hoos and The Fourth Hoos, English translation of St. Antony Monastery, California, in the Tasbeha hymn library. ↩

  2. Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, Against the Heathen 45.1, trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF second series 4, primary text. ↩

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