Read & explore together
Discipline the mouth against oaths and abuse
Sirach 23:7–15 teaches that speech needs discipline. This wisdom passage warns that lips can trap a person through insults, oaths, rude speech and abusive habits that become hard to change.
Understanding the passage
Listening in context
The speaker addresses “my children” and gives instruction about “the discipline of the mouth”. The passage stays on spoken words and their results: stumbling through the lips, becoming accustomed to oaths, uttering the Holy Name, and speech patterns that bring shame, sin and trouble. This passage is from the Catholic additional books.
Sirach 23:7–15Main takeaway
This passage teaches that repeated sinful speech, especially oaths and abuse, leads to guilt and trouble, so the mouth must be trained with discipline.
Look closely at the words
Open a card to explore the full explanation and its Bible references.
01The mouth can guard or trapThe teaching begins with a call to “listen”. “Discipline of the mouth” points to trained speech, not careless speech.
Explanation
The teaching begins with a call to “listen”. “Discipline of the mouth” points to trained speech, not careless speech. One who keeps the mouth “will not be caught”. By contrast, the sinner is “overpowered through his lips”, and insulting and arrogant words make a person stumble.
02Do not become used to oathsSirach then warns against habit: do not accustom your mouth to an oath or to naming the Holy One.
Explanation
Sirach then warns against habit: do not accustom your mouth to an oath or to naming the Holy One. The comparison with continual scourging and bruises stresses repeated harm. A person who keeps swearing and uttering the Name “will not be cleansed from sin”.
03Deadly speech becomes a hard habitA man of many oaths is said to be filled with iniquity, whether he offends, disregards it, or swears falsely.
Explanation
A man of many oaths is said to be filled with iniquity, whether he offends, disregards it, or swears falsely. Then the warning broadens: some speech is “clothed with death”; gross rudeness and abusive language should not be learned. Bad speech can bring shame and remain uncorrected.
Questions to explore
Pause, look back at the verses and talk together.
01What two different outcomes appear at the start of the passage?
Compare the one who keeps the mouth and is not caught with the sinner who is overpowered through his lips.
02What repeated habit is forbidden in Sirach 23:9–10?
Look for the warning against becoming accustomed to an oath and to naming the Holy One.
03How does the final part show that harmful speech spreads beyond oaths?
Notice the movement from many oaths to speech “clothed with death”, gross rudeness, shame before others, and abusive language that is not corrected.
Read the Bible passage
World English Bible ClassicScripture quotation · Public domain
Sirach 23:7–15
7Listen, my children, to the discipline of the mouth. He who keeps it will not be caught.
8The sinner will be overpowered through his lips. By them, the insulter and the arrogant will stumble.
9Don’t accustom your mouth to an oath, and don’t be accustomed to naming the Holy One,
10for as a servant who is continually scourged will not lack bruises, so he also who swears and continually utters the Name will not be cleansed from sin.
11A man of many oaths will be filled with iniquity. The scourge will not depart from his house. If he offends, his sin will be upon him. If he disregards it, he has sinned doubly. If he has sworn falsely, he will not be justified, for his house will be filled with calamities.
12There is a manner of speech that is clothed with death. Let it not be found in the heritage of Jacob, for all these things will be far from the godly, and they will not wallow in sins.
13Don’t accustom your mouth to gross rudeness, for it involves sinful speech.
14Remember your father and your mother, for you sit in the midst of great men, that you be not forgetful before them, and become a fool by your bad habit; so you may wish that you had not been born, and curse the day of your birth.
15A man who is accustomed to abusive language won’t be corrected all the days of his life.