This verse should not be a paragraph standing alone, as in Good News Translation, but it should be the concluding sentence of the paragraph beginning at verse 11. This will help bring out the contrasting images in this verse and the previous verse.

The mind of a fool is like a broken jar: Mind is literally “intestines.” The Syriac and Latin here read “heart,” which in Hebrew designates the organ of thought (“mind” in English). The intestines are usually associated with emotion rather than thought, but it is hard to imagine what else could have been meant here but “mind.” New Revised Standard Version has “mind,” and taking it as a textual matter, adds a footnote. The Handbook thinks it is a translational matter, and sees no need for a footnote. For fool see the comments on 8.17. The broken jar is a clay container that has been damaged (compare 13.2). Revised Standard Version broken is better than Good News Translation “with a hole in it.” The point, of course, is that the jar cannot hold water, or whatever it was supposed to contain. The broken jar contrasts with the “flood” and the “flowing spring” of verse 13. Good News Translation brings out the contrast with verse 13 by inserting “on the other hand,” which does not correspond to any specific Greek word or phrase. A possible alternative model for this line is “The mind of a fool, on the other hand, is like a broken jar that cannot hold water for long.”

It will hold no knowledge: Good News Translation does well here; we could also say “anything he learns is soon forgotten” or “He [the fool] soon forgets whatever he learns.” The translator must beware here of making it sound as if the broken jar is supposed to hold knowledge.

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.