A man who builds his house with other people’s money is like one who gathers stones for his burial mound: In our judgment Good News Translation is completely wrong in its interpretation here (so also Contemporary English Version). The Greek does not say that the money is “borrowed.” It says only that it “belongs to others,” which is the literal meaning of the adjective modifying money. Almost certainly, this money is gotten from other people by unjust means, by the “cruelty and arrogance” of verse 4. The phrase builds his house may be an idiom for amassing wealth (noted by Di Lella [1987]). We could translate the whole verse this way: “Anyone who tries to become rich at the expense of other people is only collecting stones for his own tomb” or “Anyone who tries to become rich by unjustly taking money from others is doing nothing more than collecting stones to erect his own tomb.” These renderings sacrifice some of the imagery; this verse pictures a person gathering stones, thinking it is to build a house, when what he is really erecting is his own tomb, that is, condemning himself to a premature death. (See again verses 4-5.) We could keep the imagery by saying “Anyone who builds a house with money he has obtained unjustly is really only collecting stones for his own tomb.”

The footnote added by Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation is proper and should be followed by other translators. The text is uncertain, and most manuscripts (and Rahlfs’ text) read “for the winter” instead of “for the tomb” (Ziegler’s text; his is supplied in translation). Some guess that this refers to the foolishness of gathering stones instead of firewood, but this does not sound appropriate to the situation in Palestine. One scholar (Peri) suggests that the last half of the second line in the original Hebrew may have read “piles stones in the wadi [dry river bed],” which the winter rains will wash away. In our judgment Ziegler’s text, “for the tomb,” makes excellent sense and should be followed.

A burial mound is a tomb made from stones. It is built above or partly above the ground.

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.