Catholic Commentary
Nathan the Prophet Introduced
1After him, Nathan rose up to prophesy in the days of David.
Sirach 47:1 introduces Nathan as a divinely appointed prophet who rose up during David's reign, succeeding Samuel in the chain of prophetic witness to Israel's leadership. The verse establishes Nathan as essential to David's era, foreshadowing his role as a prophetic voice that stands before kings to ensure accountability and moral guidance.
God never leaves power without a prophetic voice — every David needs a Nathan, and every age needs its courageous truth-tellers.
St. Gregory the Great, in his Moralia in Job, frequently highlights the prophet's duty to reprove the powerful without fear of personal cost — a theme perfectly exemplified by Nathan. Gregory would see in Nathan's confrontation of David a model for episcopal and priestly courage: the shepherd who loves his king enough to tell him the truth.
The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§4) affirms that God spoke "through the prophets" in preparation for the fullness of revelation in Christ. Nathan stands near the center of this preparatory revelation: his dynastic oracle to David ("your house and your kingdom shall endure forever" — 2 Samuel 7:16) is identified by Catholic exegesis, following patristic tradition, as a direct foreshadowing of the eternal kingship of Jesus Christ. St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus both cite the Davidic covenant as essential to understanding the Incarnation. Ben Sira's one verse thus quietly carries centuries of Christological weight.
The image of Nathan "rising up" beside David speaks powerfully to Catholics navigating a culture that often separates faith from public life. Nathan did not prophesy in the abstract — he walked into the king's palace and spoke God's truth to a man who held enormous power. For Catholics today, this is a call to prophetic witness in whatever sphere God has placed them: the boardroom, the family, the parish council, the political arena. It is not enough to believe rightly in private; authentic faith, like Nathan's, is ordered toward speaking truth where it matters most.
Practically, this verse invites an examination of conscience: Is there a "David" in my life — a relationship, an institution, or a cultural pressure — where I am called to speak a word of truth but have remained silent out of fear or comfort? Nathan's courage was not cruelty; his confrontation of David was driven by love for both the king and the covenant. Catholics are called to the same integrated witness: speaking truth charitably but without compromise, trusting that God who "raised up" Nathan will also sustain those He calls today.
Commentary
Sirach 47 belongs to the extended "Praise of the Ancestors" (Chapters 44–50), Ben Sira's grand survey of Israel's heroic figures. Chapter 46 closes with the judges and Samuel; chapter 47 opens with David's era. The connecting phrase "After him" (Greek: met' auton; Hebrew: aḥarāyw) links Nathan directly to Samuel, the prophet-judge who anointed David. This is not incidental: Ben Sira is tracing an unbroken chain of prophetic witness. Just as Samuel's word inaugurated David's kingship, Nathan's word would shape and chasten it.
The verb "rose up" (anestē in the Greek Septuagint) carries a sense of divine appointment — Nathan did not elect himself but was raised up by God for a specific moment in sacred history. This is consistent with the deuteronomistic theology that pervades the historical books: God raises prophets precisely when kings require accountability (cf. Deuteronomy 18:15–18). Ben Sira's economy of words here is deliberate; he is not narrating Nathan's deeds yet (those come in verses 2–11 in the context of David's praise), but introducing him as a prophetic presence essential to understanding David's reign.
The phrase "in the days of David" situates Nathan's prophecy as contextually bound but also historically definitive. Nathan appears in the canonical record in three pivotal moments: he delivers the dynastic oracle of 2 Samuel 7 (the Davidic covenant); he confronts David with the parable of the ewe lamb after David's sin with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12); and he orchestrates Solomon's succession at David's death (1 Kings 1). Ben Sira's introduction therefore compresses a vast prophetic career into a single line, trusting his educated Jewish reader to carry the full weight of those associations.
Typologically, the pairing of king and prophet models the relationship between royal authority and divine truth. Nathan's role anticipates the entire prophetic tradition that stands "before kings" — a tradition fulfilled ultimately in John the Baptist, who arose "in the spirit and power of Elijah" (Luke 1:17) to stand before Herod just as Nathan stood before David. The spiritual sense of this verse, then, is that God never leaves power without a prophetic voice: every David needs a Nathan.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition reads the prophetic office not merely as prediction but as the living mediation of God's Word into the concrete circumstances of human history. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the prophets proclaim a radical redemption of the People of God, purification from all their infidelities, a salvation which will include all the nations" (CCC 64). Nathan embodies this precisely: his oracle in 2 Samuel 7 is one of the most theologically charged texts in all of Scripture, forming the backbone of Messianic expectation and directly cited in the New Testament regarding Christ (cf. Hebrews 1:5; Luke 1:32–33).