"Acquire for yourself money, and a good wife, fear of God, and accumulate sons for yourself, even a hundred of them."
The letter Kuf (ק) in the Alphabet of Ben Sira delivers a proverb that reads like an ancient life-goals checklist. Get money. Find a good wife. Fear God. And have as many sons as possible—a hundred, if you can manage it.
What's striking is the order. Money comes first. Then a wife. Then God. The Alphabet of Ben Sira, composed between 700 and 1000 CE, has a reputation for being irreverent, and this ordering might be part of that. Most rabbinic texts would put the fear of God at the top of any list. Pirkei Avot 2:12 says that a "good heart" is the best path a person can follow. But Ben Sira's priorities here are material and practical.
Or maybe the order isn't hierarchical at all. Maybe it's just a list. The Alphabet is, after all, a text that delights in piling up ideas. The mention of "a hundred sons" is almost certainly hyperbolic—an echo of the biblical value placed on large families and God's promise to Abraham of descendants beyond counting (Genesis 15:5). But the sheer ambition of the number gives the proverb its flavor. Ben Sira doesn't want a comfortable life. He wants everything.
It's the ancient equivalent of dreaming big.