Sirach on David
[“With his whole being (David) loved his Maker and daily had his praises sung . . .” (Sirach 47:8). The Book of Sirach was written in Hebrew by Yeshua ben Sira in Jerusalem (c.180 BCE). Although the text curiously did not enter the Hebrew bible, the work’s Greek translation by the hand of the author’s grandson while in Egypt (c.117 BCE) would come to be viewed as canonical among many of the Way of Jesus, particularly in the Latin west. Only in the 20th C would scroll discoveries confirm the autographs to be in Hebrew. Sirach 47:2-11 was devoted to the lauding of the the heroic ethical and liturgical contributions of Israel’s greatest king. His role remains paradigmatic for both Jews and Christians.]
O Lover,
The above Sirach text, while unknown in the protestant first half of my life, has strangely settled into me in recent months. In this prayer I cite two strands of Your drawing power via it.
First, while celebrated in memory and text, David clearly was not a paragon of virtue. In addition to being a man of war, an adulterer, and a vicarious murderer, his familial and parenting patterns occasioned much suffering for both himself and those around him. Rather than fixating upon preserving his own moral scrupulosity and innocence, he lived zestily, sometimes recklessly, often exacting a high price on his loved ones and himself for his flawed choices. Nevertheless, David appears in Sirach’s pantheon of heroes where it is written that “[You] forgave him his sins and exalted his strength forever” (47:11). He would emerge as the fulfillment of Samuel’s prophecy that after predecessor Saul there would come one “after [Your] own heart” (I Sam 13:14). It is this one whose spiritual vulnerability, transparency, and longing for You would imbue what would be called the Psalter, subsequently important to all of the Abrahamics.
I identify with David. I too in my blundering way have sought to live zestily, occasionally recklessly. I too have injured those most dear to me. I too have been in severe need of, and have received, Your forgiveness. O Lover, behold David: he is I.
The second strand of the Sirach reference, the first notwithstanding, is that the “shoot from Jesse’s stump” (Is 11:1) is celebrated as loving (agapáo in the Greek translation) You with his entire being. He is not lauded for his wisdom, rectitude, or gelássenheit (“relinquishment”) so much as for his passionate longing for intimacy with You. For many followers of the Christ (”Anointed One” = “Messiah”) there would be a direct line passing from that centrality of loving You unqualifiedly through the Christic “son of David” (Mt 1:1, et al.) to the depiction of You as Love Itself (I Jn 4:8,16 [agápe]). It was capacity for love on the part of the Bethlehem shepherd, this with “with his whole being,” which would fulfill the prophecy of one “after [Your] own heart,” a characterization much like that which Jesus both embodied and declared in the Great Commandment in the Synoptics.
The drama unfolding through much of Holy Writ is, above all else, a love story, one fueled by the impulse of the individuated and marginated toward convergence and, ultimately, union. This propensity, inculcated by You into the spiritual DNA of all having being, is, in the imagery of Eckhart, the “boiling over” (ebullítio) of the relationality intrinsic to Your Triune Sacred Heart. Sirach points to David as one of the giant harbingers of Your Self-disclosing concretion of this dynamic in the Christ, thus known as the Son of David.
More intensely because of Sirach, I too, like David, love You with my entire being, or at least desire to do so. I too aspire to be a part of the “shoot from Jesse’s stump.”
