Sirach 19:7–12

Verse 7: "Never repeat what is told you, and you won't lose anything." Ben Sira opens with a maxim of stunning economy. The Hebrew and Greek traditions of wisdom literature share the conviction that speech is a form of expenditure — one can spend words wisely or squander them. The phrase "you won't lose anything" is deliberately paradoxical: silence is framed not as deprivation but as preservation, even profit. The sage is not counseling dullness or indifference; he is teaching the discipline of retention. What is entrusted to you in confidence is not yours to disburse. This is the foundational principle from which the following verses flow.

Verse 8: "Whether it is of friend or foe, don't tell it. Unless it is a sin to you, don't reveal it." Here Ben Sira universalizes the command: it applies regardless of the relationship between the speaker and the subject. The natural temptation is to think gossip about an enemy is permissible, or that sharing a confidence about a friend is a form of intimacy. Ben Sira closes both exits. The critical qualifier — "unless it is a sin to you" — introduces a morally important exception. Not all silence is virtuous; there are matters (crimes, grave harm, the protection of the innocent) that must be disclosed. This is not a counsel of complicity. Rather, Ben Sira distinguishes between idle repetition and morally obligated speech, anticipating what Catholic moral theology would later elaborate as the duty to speak versus the duty to protect reputation.

Verse 9: "For if he has heard you and observed you, when the time comes, he will hate you." The sage now supplies the prudential motivation — not merely altruistic but also self-interested, which is characteristic of wisdom literature's appeal to integral human flourishing. The person who discovers they have been talked about, whether friend or foe, will eventually turn against the gossip. The word "observed" (Greek: paratēreō) suggests watchful, calculating scrutiny — the subject is now studying the one who spoke. Trust, once broken by loose speech, produces not merely disappointment but active enmity. The relationship is poisoned at its root.

Verse 10: "Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Be brave: it will not make you burst!" This is the rhetorical and spiritual heart of the passage. The imperative "be brave" (andrízou in the Greek, literally "be manly," act with courage) is startling in this context. Ben Sira treats the containment of speech as a form of fortitude — one of the cardinal virtues. The ironic assurance, "it will not make you burst," recognizes the genuine psychological pressure of holding a secret or a piece of news. The fool experiences uncontained speech as a physiological necessity; the wise person recognizes this as a disordered impulse to be governed. The verse implies that the difficulty of silence is real, and precisely because it is difficult, it is a virtuous act.

Verse 11: "A fool will travail in pain with a word, as a woman in labor with a child." The simile is bold and deliberately bodily. Just as labor pains drive a woman toward delivery — an unstoppable biological process — so gossip strains and convulses the fool from within, demanding to be expelled. Ben Sira is not mocking the agony of childbirth; he is using its urgency and involuntary character to describe the fool's relationship to unspoken news. What should be a matter of will and rational governance has become, in the fool, an almost organic compulsion. The word is alive inside him, pressing outward. This is a diagnosis of disordered appetite at the level of speech.

Verse 12: "As an arrow that sticks in the flesh of the thigh, so is gossip in a fool." The second simile shifts from the perspective of the gossip under pressure to the injury gossip inflicts. An arrow lodged in muscle does not merely wound on impact; it remains, festers, and causes ongoing damage whenever the limb moves. The "thigh" in Semitic idiom also carries connotations of the seat of strength and generativity (cf. Gen 24:2; 32:25). Gossip, then, is not a clean wound that heals — it embeds itself, corrupting relationship and community from within. The fool is both the bearer of the arrow (unable to remove the compulsive word) and, implicitly, the one who lodges such arrows in others.

Typological and Spiritual Senses: The passage participates in a broader sapiential theology of the logos — the power of the spoken word either to build or to destroy. Typologically, the "fool" who cannot contain speech stands in contrast to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (53:7), who "opened not his mouth." Christ's silence before Pilate and Herod is the supreme fulfillment of this ideal: not the silence of weakness, but of sovereign self-governance and redemptive purpose. The arrow metaphor resonates with Psalm 64, where the wicked shoot arrows of bitter words, and with the Johannine understanding of the Word (Logos) as the antithesis of idle, destructive speech.

Catholic tradition brings a uniquely rich framework to this passage through its integrated understanding of the eighth commandment, the virtue of prudence, and the theology of the tongue.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church treats offenses against truth and reputation with striking specificity. CCC 2477 identifies rash judgment, detraction (revealing another's faults without valid reason), and calumny (false statements that harm reputation) as distinct sins against the eighth commandment. Ben Sira's counsel maps directly onto this taxonomy: the repeated confidence (verse 7) risks detraction; speaking ill of foe or friend (verse 8) risks calumny; the gossip embedded in the fool (verse 12) is precisely the detraction that "destroys the reputation of others" (CCC 2477).

St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Epistle to the Ephesians, describes gossip as a form of spiritual violence — an assault on the image of God (imago Dei) in the person spoken of. He writes that the tongue, "though a small member, sets great fires" — an echo of James 3:5 that Ben Sira anticipates.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 73), treats detraction as a sin against justice, because reputation is a real good belonging to a person, and to steal it through loose speech is to commit a genuine injustice. Ben Sira's verse 9 — the eventual hatred of the one discovered — reflects Aquinas's point that such sins destroy the social fabric.

The virtue of silence itself is treated in the Rule of St. Benedict (Chapter 6) as a spiritual discipline preparatory to holy speech. Benedict, drawing on Proverbs and Sirach, teaches that even good words should sometimes be withheld out of reverence. Verse 10's command to "be brave" aligns with this Benedictine understanding: silence is ascesis, an exercise of the will ordered by charity.

Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium (§§ 100–101) warns against the "spiritual worldliness" that manifests in gossip within Church communities, noting that it "wounds and kills" the Body of Christ. Ben Sira's arrow metaphor finds striking contemporary Magisterial resonance here.

Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with occasions for the very sins Ben Sira diagnoses. Parish life, online Catholic discourse, family gatherings, and workplace conversation are all environments where information about others moves rapidly and often carelessly. The pressure to share — verse 10's "it will not make you burst" — is now amplified by social media, where the impulse to post, comment, and forward is engineered into the platforms we use.

Ben Sira's practical challenge for today is concrete: the next time you learn something unflattering, embarrassing, or controversial about another person — a fellow parishioner, a priest, a colleague — apply verse 10 as a literal examination of conscience. Have I heard something? Can I let it die with me? The sage's wry assurance that the unspoken word "will not make you burst" is a call to name the compulsion honestly and choose differently.

For parents, catechists, and pastors, verses 11–12 offer vivid images that communicate to any age: gossip is not casual, it is a wound that stays. Teaching children and young adults to identify the "labor pains" of unspoken gossip — the restless urge to tell — and to name it as a spiritual test rather than an innocent impulse is practical formation in virtue. Regular examination of conscience on the eighth commandment, using CCC 2477–2479 as a guide, transforms these ancient verses into a living rule of life.