Read & explore together
Stolen offerings and unchanged conduct defeat worship
Sirach 34:18–26 warns that worship cannot be separated from everyday conduct. The passage says stolen goods, unpaid wages, and repeated wrongdoing make sacrifices, prayer, fasting, and cleansing empty rather than pleasing to the Lord.
Understanding the passage
Listening in context
This passage appears in Sirach, part of the Catholic additional books, and speaks in wisdom-style sayings. It moves from offerings, to the treatment of poor and hired workers, and then to prayer, washing, and fasting, showing that outward religious acts are judged together with a person’s conduct.
Sirach 34:18–26Main takeaway
According to Sirach 34:18–26, worship offered while a person continues in unjust conduct is not accepted as true repentance.
Look closely at the words
Open a card to explore the full explanation and its Bible references.
01Wrongly gained offerings are rejectedThe passage begins by saying that a sacrifice from wrongful gain is a mockery, not a gift God welcomes.
Explanation
The passage begins by saying that a sacrifice from wrongful gain is a mockery, not a gift God welcomes. It adds that the Most High does not delight in the offerings of the ungodly, and many sacrifices cannot simply cancel sins. The focus is not quantity, but moral truthfulness in worship.
02Taking from the poor is treated as life-destroyingSirach then uses severe comparisons. To offer goods taken from the poor is compared to a shocking act of violence.
Explanation
Sirach then uses severe comparisons. To offer goods taken from the poor is compared to a shocking act of violence. The writer explains why: bread is the poor person’s life, and taking away a neighbour’s living or withholding a hired worker’s pay is treated as bloodguilt, not a small social failure.
03Religious acts can be undone by opposite conductTwo brief questions make the argument vivid. If one person builds while another tears down, nothing is gained but toil.
Explanation
Two brief questions make the argument vivid. If one person builds while another tears down, nothing is gained but toil. If one prays while another curses, the result is conflict, not harmony. The passage exposes the emptiness of worship when a person’s actions work against what their religious words claim.
04Repeated sin empties washing and fastingThe final comparison uses washing after touching a dead body and then touching it again. The point is not to retell an event, but to show futility.
Explanation
The final comparison uses washing after touching a dead body and then touching it again. The point is not to retell an event, but to show futility. In the same way, fasting for sins while returning to the same deeds makes prayer profitless, because the conduct has not changed.
Questions to explore
Pause, look back at the verses and talk together.
01What does the passage say is wrong with offering sacrifices from wrongful gain?
Look at the words "made in mockery" and "not acceptable," and connect them with the statement that many sacrifices do not pacify for sins.
02Why does Sirach speak so strongly about taking bread, wages, or a person’s living?
Notice how the text links the needy person’s bread with life itself, and compares deprivation with bloodshed.
03How do the examples of building and pulling down, praying and cursing, washing and touching again explain false repentance?
Each picture shows an action being cancelled or contradicted by what follows after it.
Read the Bible passage
World English Bible ClassicScripture quotation · Public domain
Sirach 34:18–26
18He who sacrifices a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is made in mockery. The mockeries of wicked men are not acceptable.
19The Most High has no pleasure in the offerings of the ungodly, Neither is he pacified for sins by the multitude of sacrifices.
20Like one who kills a son before his father’s eyes is he who brings a sacrifice from the goods of the poor.
21The bread of the needy is the life of the poor. He who deprives him of it is a man of blood.
22Like one who murders his neighbor is he who takes away his living. Like a shedder of blood is he who deprives a hireling of his hire.
23When one builds, and another pulls down, what profit do they have but toil?
24When one prays, and another curses, whose voice will the Lord listen to?
25He who washes himself after touching a dead body, and touches it again, what does he gain by his washing?
26Even so a man fasting for his sins, and going again, and doing the same, who will listen to his prayer? What profit does he have in his humiliation?