Picture an old courtroom. Wood-panelled, dust in the sunlight. Every saint who has ever lived is on the benches. At the front, an empty witness stand. And Ben Sira, the old wisdom teacher of Jerusalem, is about to ask three questions that have never been answered in the affirmative.
Core Message:
The long testimony of history, Scripture, and lived faith declares that God has never ultimately failed, forsaken, or ignored those who truly trust in Him.
The Three Questions of Ecclesiasticus 2:10
• Has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed?
• Has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken?
• Has anyone called upon Him and been neglected?
The Empty Witness Stand
The reflection uses the powerful image of an empty witness stand to show that no saint, prophet, sufferer, or ordinary believer can truthfully testify that God finally abandoned them.
The Deeper Spiritual Message
The reflection does not claim that believers never suffer, never wait, never doubt, or always receive immediate answers. Instead, it teaches that suffering is real, waiting can be long, and silence can feel painful — yet God’s faithfulness is ultimately vindicated over time.
The message progresses from trust, to perseverance, to continued prayer despite uncertainty.
The Practical Call to the Reader
The reflection encourages readers to stop interrogating God and begin remembering His faithfulness in their own lives by recalling past rescues, delayed answers, unexpected provisions, and meaningful closed doors.
One-Sentence Core Message
God’s faithfulness is confirmed not merely by doctrine, but by the unbroken testimony of generations who trusted Him through suffering and were never ultimately abandoned.
Wake-Up Calls • Reflection 131 • Post Streak 1027
The Empty Witness Stand
A Reflection on Ecclesiasticus 2:10
Consider the generations of old and see: Has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed? Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken? Or has anyone called upon him and been neglected?
Ecclesiasticus 2:10
കഴിഞ്ഞ തലമുറകളെപ്പറ്റി ചിന്തിക്കുവിന്; കര്ത്താവിനെ ആശ്രയിച്ചിട്ട് ആരാണ് ഭഗ്നാശനായത്? കര്ത്താവിന്റെഭക്തരില് ആരാണ് പരിത്യക്തനായത്? അവിടുത്തെ വിളിച്ചപേക്ഷിച്ചിട്ട് ആരാണ് അവഗണിക്കപ്പെട്ടത്?
പ്രഭാഷകന് 2:10
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The Court Is Called to Order
Picture, dear reader, an old courtroom. Wood-panelled, sunlight slanting through high windows, dust suspended in the air. At the front stands a witness box, plain and worn smooth by centuries of testimony. The benches are full. The galleries are crowded. Every saint who has ever lived is in the room. Every faithful soul of every generation since Eden has gathered for this hearing.
And the question before the court is the gravest one a human heart can ask. Did God, at any point in the long history of his people, prove untrustworthy? Did he, even once, fail those who placed their lives in his hands? Did he, in any single instance across forty centuries, abandon the soul that would not let him go?
Ben Sira, the old wisdom teacher of Jerusalem, presides as the court’s prosecutor. But notice, beloved, he is not prosecuting God. He is prosecuting our doubts. He stands and addresses the room. ‘Consider the generations of old,’ he says, ‘and see.’ Then he turns and calls his witnesses, one by one, with three terrible questions. And the courtroom holds its breath.
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The First Witness: Those Who Trusted
‘Has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed?’
The first call goes out, and the courtroom stirs. Will anyone rise? Will anyone step forward and place a hand upon the rail and swear, before this great cloud of witnesses, that they trusted God and were left holding nothing?
Abraham could rise. He left Ur on a promise spoken in his sleep, walked into a desert without a map, waited twenty-five years for a son and another century for the inheritance, watched his hand tremble as he raised a knife above the boy he loved. Did he trust and was he disappointed? He is silent in the gallery. He will not step forward.
Hannah could rise. She wept in the temple at Shiloh until Eli mistook her sorrow for drunkenness. She trusted God for a child when her womb had been closed for years and her rival had mocked her at every meal. Did she trust and was she disappointed? She is in the room with Samuel beside her, and she will not step forward.
The widow of Zarephath could rise. She had a handful of flour and a little oil and a son who would not last the week. The prophet asked her to feed him first. She trusted, and the jar did not empty for the length of a famine. Did she trust and was she disappointed? She sits with her son fully grown beside her, and she will not step forward.
The court waits. The wood creaks. The witness stand remains empty. And every reader who has ever clutched a promise in the dark hears, in that silence, the first answer of the generations. No one has trusted the Lord and been disappointed. No one. Not once. Not yet.
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The Second Witness: Those Who Persevered
‘Has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken?’
Ben Sira raises the second call. This is the harder question. Trust is the first day. Perseverance is the ten-thousandth day, when the answer has still not come, when the prayer has worn a path in the floor, when the soul wonders, quietly and shamefully, whether God has simply forgotten where one lives.
Joseph could rise. Thirteen years in pits and prisons, falsely accused, abandoned by the cupbearer who promised to remember him. Did he persevere and was he forsaken? He sits in the second row beside his brothers, and he will not step forward.
Job could rise. Seven sons and three daughters buried in a single afternoon, his body covered with sores, his wife begging him to curse God and die, his friends interpreting his agony as a verdict against him. Did he persevere and was he forsaken? He is in the gallery with the daughters of his second beginning, and he will not step forward.
The three young men of Babylon could rise. They walked into a furnace heated seven times hotter, having said with magnificent boldness that even if God did not deliver them, they would not bow. Did they persevere and were they forsaken? They are seated together, their garments untouched by fire, and they will not step forward.
Again the court waits. The benches are full of those who waited longer than any human soul should have to wait, whose perseverance the angels themselves wondered at, whose long obedience seemed at times to disappear into a heaven of silence. Not one of them rises. Not one of them testifies that God forsook them in the end. The witness stand stays empty, and the silence grows louder.
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The Third Witness: Those Who Called
‘Has anyone called upon him and been neglected?’
Ben Sira raises the final question, and now the room is electric. This is the question every reader has secretly wanted asked. Not whether God answers loudly, not whether he answers quickly, not whether he answers in the form we expected, but the deeper question beneath all these. Has anyone, anywhere, ever called on the Lord and found heaven empty?
David could rise. From the cave of Adullam, from the wilderness of Ziph, from the depths of his own bitter failure with Bathsheba, from the howling grief of Absalom’s death, David called and called and called. Were his cries neglected? His psalms fill the church’s prayer book to this day, and he will not step forward.
The blind beggar of Jericho could rise. He cried out above the crowd that tried to silence him, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me,’ and would not be quieted. Was his cry neglected? He sees the court clearly now, and he will not step forward.
The thief on the cross could rise. He had no time for repentance, no record of good works, no claim on the kingdom. He said only, ‘Jesus, remember me,’ as life left him by inches. Was he neglected? He is seated near the front, in the place reserved for those who arrived late and were welcomed first, and he will not step forward.
And then, beloved, a quieter rank of witnesses fills the back of the courtroom. The unknown mothers who prayed all night for prodigal sons and lived to see the homecoming. The forgotten widows who wept into the Eucharist and rose with light on their faces. The persecuted believers who whispered the Name in cells where no human ear could hear. The grandmothers who put their grandchildren on God’s altar and went to their graves believing. None of them, beloved. None of them rises. None of them testifies that they called and were ignored. The witness stand is empty for the third time, and now the silence has become a verdict.
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The Verdict of Silence
Three calls. Three witnesses summoned. Three silences. And in those three silences, beloved, lies the loudest verdict in the history of the church. The witness stand remains empty because there is no one to fill it. No one has trusted the Lord and been finally disappointed. No one has persevered and been finally forsaken. No one has called and been finally neglected. The case is closed. The generations of old have testified by their refusal to testify against him.
Ben Sira knew what he was doing when he framed his consolation as questions rather than statements. He could have written, ‘God will not disappoint you. God will not forsake you. God will not neglect you.’ He chose instead to summon four thousand years of evidence and let the silence speak. Because the doubt that haunts you in the small hours, friend, is rarely defeated by another doctrine. It is defeated by the long, lit, unanswerable witness of the saints who walked your road before you and arrived, every last one of them, safely home.
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And Now, Your Turn
The court is not yet adjourned. There is one more witness to call. Ben Sira turns, with the weight of all the saints behind him, and looks at you.
‘And what of your own generation?’ he asks. ‘What of your own life? Walk now into the witness stand and testify. The mornings you trusted God and were carried through. The years you persevered when no one would have blamed you for quitting. The cries you sent into heaven and the strange, slow, wiser answers that came back. Stand up, friend. Add your voice to the testimony. The generations of old have spoken. Now speak.’
This is the bold word for today. Stop interrogating God. Start interrogating your own memory. Walk slowly back through your years and count the rescues. Count the unexpected provisions. Count the prayers that seemed unanswered until later, much later, you saw what God had been doing while you complained of his silence. Count the doors that closed, which you now thank him for closing. Count the people who came at just the right moment carrying just the right word. Count, beloved, until you cannot count any more, and then know this: you are one more witness in a courtroom four thousand years old, and the verdict has never changed.
Trust him again today. The witness stand is still empty. It will always be empty. There has never been, and there will never be, a single soul who clung to the Lord and was, in the end, let down.
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A Prayer
Faithful God of every generation, you who have never once disappointed the soul that ran to you, never once forsaken the soul that waited for you, never once neglected the soul that cried to you, hear us as we add our small voice to the great chorus of those who have walked with you. We have feared in the night. We have wondered in the silence. We have doubted in the waiting. Forgive our small memory and enlarge our long sight. Place us, today, in the courtroom of the saints, and let us hear again the verdict their silence speaks. Then send us out into our ordinary day with the courage of those who know what the testimony has always been. In the name of Jesus Christ, the faithful Witness, the firstborn from the dead, the Lord of every generation. Amen.
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Johnbritto Kurusumuthu
From the Empty Stand to the Old Wisdom Bench
A Bridge between the Pastoral Reflection and the Commentary on Ecclesiasticus 2:10
If you have sat with us in the old courtroom of the saints, dear reader, you have already heard the verdict the silence speaks. Three calls, three witness stands left empty, and the long generations of God’s people refusing to testify against him. The image is gentle in its way, but the case it closes is the gravest a human heart can bring. Has God ever, even once, let go of the hand that would not let go of his?
Yet the image alone does not exhaust the verse. Ben Sira was not painting; he was teaching. He stood at the front of a Jerusalem schoolroom around the year 180 before Christ, addressing young men who were about to inherit a faith under increasing pressure from Greek philosophy and Hellenistic prosperity. His Hebrew was crafted, his Greek translator was his grandson, his audience was real, and his pedagogical method was deliberate. The Scholarly Companion that follows will walk you slowly through what he was actually doing in those three carefully-shaped questions.
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Why does this matter for a working soul on a Saturday morning? Because Ecclesiasticus 2:10 is one of those verses that has comforted millions but is rarely read in its full context. Most readers meet it lifted from the chapter, printed on a card, quoted at a funeral, embroidered on a wall. The verse can take that kind of weight, but it carries even more when read where it stands, embedded in Sirach 2 — a chapter that begins with the famous warning, ‘My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for testing.’ Verse 10 is the consolation Ben Sira offers his trembling apprentice. Not a denial of testing. Not a promise of ease. A pointing to the long memory of the faithful who walked the same road and arrived home.
To read this verse rightly, then, is to learn three things at once. First, the rhetorical shape of Ben Sira’s three questions and why they consol more deeply than any flat statement could. Second, the Greek and Hebrew vocabulary that gives each question its precise spiritual weight. And third, the canonical companions of this verse across both Testaments, where the same conviction is sung in different keys by Moses, by David, by Isaiah, by Paul, and finally by the writer to the Hebrews. The Scholarly Companion will take us through each in turn.
So read on, beloved friend. Keep the courtroom still in your imagination as you turn the page. The benches are full. The witnesses are seated. And Ben Sira, the old teacher of Jerusalem, is ready to show you the craft beneath the consolation.
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Johnbritto Kurusumuthu
The Wisdom of Three Questions
A Commentary on Ecclesiasticus 2:10
Consider the generations of old and see: Has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed?
Ecclesiasticus 2:10
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1. The Book and Its Teacher
The book we know in the Catholic tradition as Ecclesiasticus, and elsewhere as Sirach or Ben Sira, was composed in Hebrew around the year 180 before Christ by Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, a scribe and wisdom teacher of Jerusalem. Some fifty years later his grandson translated the work into Greek for the diaspora community in Alexandria, and it is this Greek version that the Catholic Church received into its canon. The Council of Trent confirmed its scriptural authority in 1546, ratifying a usage that stretched back to the earliest centuries of the Church and is reflected in countless patristic citations.
Ben Sira wrote for young men preparing to take their place in a Jewish society under increasing pressure. The political settlement that followed Alexander the Great had brought Greek culture, Greek philosophy, and Greek prosperity into Jerusalem itself, and the wisdom tradition Ben Sira had inherited from Proverbs and Job and Qoheleth was facing a new kind of challenge. His book is therefore both deeply traditional and quietly polemical. It gathers the older wisdom and addresses it to a generation tempted to find easier paths.
2. The Chapter and Its Pastoral Purpose
Sirach 2 is one of the most personal chapters in the book. It opens with the famous and unforgettable warning, ‘My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for testing. Set your heart aright, and be steadfast, and do not be hasty in time of calamity.’ The chapter then walks the disciple through what the journey of faith will actually look like. There will be fire that tests the gold. There will be the humiliation of waiting. There will be moments when one’s prayer seems to disappear into a sky of bronze.
It is in this context that verse 10 arrives. Ben Sira has just spent nine verses preparing the soul for testing, and now he offers the consolation that will carry the soul through it. He does not minimise the suffering. He does not promise quick deliverance. He does something subtler and more permanent. He turns the disciple’s gaze backward — to the long memory of the faithful — and lets that memory bear the weight of the present trial.
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3. The Rhetorical Architecture of Three Questions
Notice, beloved, what Ben Sira does not say. He does not declare, ‘God will not disappoint you. God will not forsake you. God will not neglect you.’ Such statements, however true, address the doubting soul from above. They require the disciple to accept the teacher’s authority. They invite the doubt to remain in private.
Instead, Ben Sira asks three questions and commands the disciple to do the searching himself. ‘Consider the generations of old and see.’ The Greek imperative idete carries the force of ‘look for yourselves, examine the evidence, walk through the archives, gather your own witnesses.’ The teacher refuses to assert what the disciple can discover. He sets him the task of finding a counter-witness, knowing perfectly well that no counter-witness exists.
The rhetorical pattern is ancient and deliberate. Hebrew wisdom literature is filled with such ‘negative oracles’ — questions framed so that the only possible answer is the impossibility of one. Compare Lamentations 3:37, ‘Who can speak and have it happen, if the Lord has not decreed it?’, or Job 9:4, ‘Who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?’ These are not merely literary devices. They are pedagogical instruments designed to bring the disciple from passive belief to active conviction. The verse does not tell us what is true. It gives us the tools to discover it.
There is a further note worth hearing. The three questions move in deliberate sequence. The first is about trust — the simplest act of faith, the soul leaning on God for the first time. The second is about perseverance — the longer, harder faithfulness that endures through years of testing. The third is about prayer — the active calling out of the soul that refuses to fall silent. The questions therefore cover the entire arc of the spiritual life, from the first day to the last. Whatever stage the disciple is in, his question has already been raised, and the witness of the generations has already answered it.
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4. A Walk Through the Greek
γενεάς ἀρχαίας (geneas archaias) — ‘The generations of old.’ Genea is the standard Greek word for a generation, a span of time defined by the lifetimes within it. Archaias means ancient, from the beginning, original. Together the phrase invokes not merely the recent past but the whole stretch of God’s dealings with his people from the patriarchs onward. Ben Sira is asking his disciple to take the longest possible view, because the longer the view, the louder the witness.
ἐνεπίστευσεν (enepisteusen) — ‘Trusted,’ from the verb pisteuo, the same root that gives us the New Testament word for faith. The aorist form here carries the sense of a decisive act of trust, a leaning of the soul on the Lord. Ben Sira is not speaking of mere intellectual assent but of the existential act by which a human being entrusts his whole life to God.
κατῃσχύνθη (kateschunthe) — ‘Was disappointed,’ or more literally, ‘was put to shame.’ The verb is kataischuno, meaning to be humiliated, to be left publicly exposed, to have one’s hopes broken in the sight of others. The first question is therefore deeper than mere personal disappointment. It asks whether anyone has trusted God and been publicly shamed for having trusted him. The witness of the generations answers, never.
ἐνέμεινεν φόβῳ Κυρίου (enemeinen phobo Kyriou) — ‘Persevered in the fear of the Lord.’ Emmeno means to remain in, to abide steadfastly, to continue without departing. Phobos Kyriou — ‘the fear of the Lord’ — is one of Ben Sira’s great theological keywords, the reverent awe and obedient love that is the beginning of wisdom. The phrase together describes the soul that does not merely begin with God but stays with God through every storm. The Latin Vulgate renders it permansit in timore Dei.
ἐγκατελείφθη (enkateleiphthe) — ‘Was forsaken.’ The verb is enkataleipo, the strong word for being abandoned, left behind, deserted in one’s hour of need. This is the very word Christ himself will cry from the cross — Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani — quoting Psalm 22:1 in its Septuagint form. Ben Sira’s second question therefore points across the centuries to the one Cross where the question seemed for a moment to receive a different answer, and yet, even there, the answer remained the same. The Father did not forsake the Son. The third day stood waiting.
ἐπεκαλέσατο (epekalesato) — ‘Called upon him.’ The verb epikaleo means to invoke, to call by name, to summon in prayer. It is the language of the suppliant who knows the Lord’s name and is bold enough to use it. The middle voice form here suggests a personal, deliberate calling, the soul placing its claim upon the Lord whose name it knows.
ὑπερεῖδεν (huphereiden) — ‘Was overlooked’ or ‘neglected.’ From huperorao, literally ‘to look over,’ that is, to fail to see, to disregard. The third question is the sharpest in its emotional weight. The disciple may believe God exists and yet wonder, in the dark, whether God sees him. Ben Sira’s question places this fear under the lamp of the generations, and the lamp reveals no witness who was ever overlooked by God.
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5. A Note on the Hebrew Original
For many centuries the Hebrew text of Ben Sira was thought to have been lost, the book surviving only in its Greek translation. Then in the late nineteenth century, fragments of the Hebrew original were discovered in the Cairo Genizah, and in the mid-twentieth century further fragments were recovered from Masada and from Qumran. Today roughly two-thirds of the book’s Hebrew text has been recovered.
For Sirach 2:10, the Hebrew witness is preserved in Manuscript A from the Cairo Genizah. The Hebrew verbs underlying our verse are batach (to trust, the same root David uses repeatedly in the Psalms), yare (to fear, in the reverential sense), and qara (to call upon, the standard verb for invocation). Each of these is a foundational vocabulary item of Old Testament piety, and Ben Sira deliberately uses words that would resonate with his disciple’s memory of the Psalter. The verse is therefore not merely a clever literary construction. It is a deliberate echo of the prayer-vocabulary of Israel, summoning the disciple back to a tradition he already knows.
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6. Canonical Resonances
The conviction Ben Sira articulates here runs through both Testaments like a strong river. Deuteronomy 4:31 promises, ‘The Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you.’ Psalm 9:10 affirms, ‘Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.’ Psalm 37:25 declares, in the voice of an old man looking back on his life, ‘I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.’ Isaiah 49:15 asks, with maternal tenderness, ‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast? Though she may forget, I will not forget you.’ Jeremiah 17:7 to 8 sings of the soul who trusts in the Lord and is like a tree planted by the waters.
In the New Testament the same conviction is taken up and intensified. Romans 10:11 cites Isaiah 28:16 — ‘Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’ Hebrews 13:5 hears God’s own voice promising, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Hebrews 11 — the great roll-call of the faithful — is essentially the New Testament’s expanded answer to Ben Sira’s question, walking from Abel through Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Rahab, and the unnamed multitudes who ‘gained what was promised.’ The whole chapter functions as a New Testament Sirach 2:10, summoning the generations of old and asking us to consider them.
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7. A Note from the Fathers
Saint Augustine, in his Expositions on the Psalms, frequently appealed to the memory of the faithful as the strongest argument against despair. ‘What others have borne, you can bear,’ he writes, ‘for the same Christ who carried them carries you.’ Saint John Cassian, in his Conferences (II, 13), cites Sirach 2 explicitly when teaching the desert monks how to endure spiritual dryness. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching on the Song of Songs, returns again and again to the witness of the saints as the surest evidence against the soul’s interior accusations. And Saint John of the Cross, in his treatment of the dark night of the soul, observes that the consolation Ben Sira offers — looking back to those who have walked the same road — is itself one of the chief medicines God provides for the contemplative in his hour of trial.
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8. For Today’s Reader
The believer who closes this companion and returns to ordinary life carries, I hope, a clearer hand on the verse. Ben Sira’s three questions are not merely a literary flourish. They are a pastoral instrument shaped by twenty centuries of accumulated wisdom and addressed to every soul who has ever doubted whether God still hears.
The instrument works because it does not argue. It points. The teacher does not say, ‘Trust me, God will not let you down.’ He says, ‘Look at the generations. Find one who was let down. I will wait.’ And the disciple, walking through the long archive of the faithful, finds no such witness. Not Abraham. Not Hannah. Not Job. Not David. Not Mary. Not the apostles. Not the martyrs. Not the grandmother who prayed for forty years and saw the prodigal return on the day she was buried. The witness stand remains empty, and the silence becomes the loudest verdict the universe has ever rendered.
This is the gift Ben Sira gives every working soul who comes to him this morning. Not a doctrine. Not a slogan. An empty witness stand and the memory of every saint who refused to fill it.
“If you walked into the witness stand today, what would your own testimony be?”
Suggested placement: at the foot of the published post, immediately before the newsletter invite, with an invitation to share one rescue, one provision, or one answered prayer in the comments.
If today’s reflection found you, friend, then come walk further with us. Every morning at Rise & Inspire we open a verse, slowly, the way one opens a window before sunrise. No noise. No hurry. Just one biblical word for the working day. Subscribe to the Wake-Up Calls newsletter and let one bold thought find your inbox before the world does.
Johnbritto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire
Inspired by the verse shared this morning, 16 May 2026, by His Excellency, Rt. Rev. Dr. Selvister Ponnumuthan, Bishop of the Diocese of Punalur, a cherished practice he has faithfully continued for over three years.
Wake-Up Calls • Reflection 131 • Post Streak 1027
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