The interpretation timeline

Sir 50:16

How this passage has been read — the sources, oldest to newest.

From the early Church Fathers to now.

Sir 50:16 · Douay-Rheims
“He stretched forth his hand to make a libation, and offered of the blood of the grape.”
Patristic before A.D. 750
254
A.D.
Origen Patristic
c. A.D. 184–253
“When our Lord Jesus comes (his coming was prefigured by the ancient son of Nun) he sends his priests, the apostles, who carry trumpets hammered out of metal, that is, the magnificent, heavenly teaching of their preaching. Matthew, in his Gospel, first sounded the priestly trumpet. Mark, Luke and John also each blew their priestly trumpets. Peter also makes the trumpets resound in his two epistles, as do James and Jude. John continues to sound the trumpet in his epistles, as does Luke when he describes the deeds of the apostles. And finally the one arrives who says, "I believe that God has placed us, the apostles, in the last place," and hurling lightning bolts with the trumpets of his fourteen epistles, he makes the walls of Jericho—the contrivances of idolatry and the opinions of philosophers—collapse on their foundations.”
Source
Modern · 1953 →

The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.