The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus 50:25 Ulasan

He says that he hated two peoples. One of these is the Jewish people subject to the letter of the law, which was also known by the name of Seir, which means “shaggy” or “hairy.” Seir is Esau, whose name means “red,” the older son of Isaac and Rebecca; the younger was called Jacob. But why was Esau all red and hairy, if not because the first people was stained by the blood of the prophets and of Christ and lived in the squalor of sin and wickedness? For this reason the younger one grabbed onto his heel, since the younger people would mysteriously surpass the older. This is in fact “a perverse and adulterous generation,” according to the truthful voice of the Gospel, that “kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to them.” In the last days they did not fear to raise their impious hands against the heir, killing the Son of God. … The other people are the Philistines, whose name means “double ruin” and symbolizes the people of the nations, contaminated by both idolatry and perverse conduct and thus making themselves hateful, since in error they have strayed far from the way of truth. The third is then the assembly of heretics, the foolish people living at Shechem, in the sides of the mountain and in discomfort, because, writing and teaching perverse things every day, they foolishly waste their effort. The fact that they are not even considered a people shows that heretics do not have a single origin or a single error but have arisen in many different places and fallen into many errors. And they even contradict each other.