Call no one happy before his death: Good News Translation‘s connector “So then” signals the reader that this verse follows from the previous verse: since verse 27 is true, then this is true. To call someone happy is to consider them happy. The focus here is not on the person being literally happy at any particular time, but on his having enjoyed a good life. For this reason Good News Translation translates “So then don’t think of anyone’s life as happy until it is over.”

This is an idea familiar from Greek literature. The historian Herodotus (Histories 1.32) has a similar thought, although in very different words: “If [a man] shall end his life well, he is … worthy to be called blessed; but wait till he is dead to call him so, and till then call him not blessed but lucky.”

A man will be known through his children: The idea of the Greek (poorly translated in Good News Translation‘s footnote) is “people will know a man’s worth [after he dies] by knowing his children.” The Greek, however, is almost certainly a misunderstanding of the Hebrew, which is read here by Good News Translation, New Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, Revised English Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, and even such conservative translations as New Jerusalem Bible and La Bible Pléiade. It happens that the Hebrew word here for “death” can also be understood as “children”; that sounds odd, but the word has to do with the idea of “after.” (The same problem appears in the Hebrew of 32.21-22.) Ben Sira’s Greek translator seems to have translated wrongly. The Handbook urges translators to follow the Hebrew here. Good News Translation is an excellent rendering, but highly idiomatic, so it provides a poor model to follow. Here is a possibility for the whole verse:

• You cannot be sure that a person has had a happy life until it is over; you cannot really say you have known a person until that person dies.

An appropriate footnote for the second line of the above rendering is: Hebrew you cannot … dies; Greek people will remember a man by knowing his children.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Sirach. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.