04_Reymond_224_246 15/07/14 12:18 Pagina 233 THE WISDOM OF WORDS 233 In a similar way, Sir 27,23 illustrates how the second-hand re- petition of one’s words may also alter their meaning, especially when the person repeating them is an antagonist 19. In your presence, his mouth is sweet, and he is amazed at your words, but later, he perverts his speech (lit., mouth) and through your words (evn toi/j lo,goij sou) he sets a snare (ska,ndalon) (Sir 27,23; Gr). The passage does not mention any imprecision or slip of the tongue that gives rise to the perversion of speech, and thus it seems that the initial speaker’s words are not what has caused his or her slander. It is possible that the fourth colon describes how a slanderer changes the words he has heard (in effect, reflecting the sense: “in your words he introduces something offensive”); usually the sense of ska,ndalon is “trap, snare” (LSJ), though in this passage from Sirach it may imply something offensive, as it does in Jdt 5,20 and 12,2 and in New Testament texts. Box and Oesterley, for example, suggest that the Hebrew underlying the Greek may be similar to that of Sir 11,31: rXq !ty $ydmxmbw (Ms A = Greek evpiqh,sei mw/mon); they explain their understanding of the verse through a paraphrase: “he will conspire against thee by wresting thy words and putting a wrong meaning upon them, and thus cause thee to give offence to others” 20. All the same, most translators understand the preposi- tional phrase evn toi/j lo,goij to imply instrumentality and understand the combination of words “to give” and “trap” more literally, reflect- ing perhaps a Hebrew idiom like that in Lev 19,14 (lwXkml !tt = prosqh,seij ska,ndalon). This would not imply, therefore, that the slanderer has changed the original words, but rather that he or she has changed their context (by, for example, altering how they were said or obscuring their original intention). In either case, the con- trast of “in your presence” and “later” may reflect a recognition that the interpretation of a given set of words can change based on 19 The thematically similar remark in Sir 11,31, “a murmurer (!grn) will turn good to bad”, probably does not reflect the original idea of the verse (see the versions). 20 BOX – OESTERLEY, “Sirach”, 407. Note also that one Greek manuscript reads “he perverts your speech”.