2 Esdras 12:40-51

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

The People Come to Ezra

⁴⁰ When all the people heard that the seven days were past and I had not returned to the city, they all gathered together, from the least to the greatest, and came to me and spoke to me, saying,^{(A) 41} “How have we offended you, and what harm have we done you, that you have forsaken us and sit in this place? ⁴² For of all the prophets you alone are left to us, like a cluster of grapes from the vintage and like a lamp in a dark place and like a haven for a ship saved from a storm.^{(B) 43} Are not the disasters that have befallen us enough? ⁴⁴ Therefore if you forsake us, how much better it would have been for us if we also had been consumed in the burning of Zion.^{(C) 45} For we are no better than those who died there.” And they wept with a loud voice.

Then I answered them and said,^{(D) 46} “Take courage, O Israel, and do not be sorrowful, O house of Jacob, ⁴⁷ for the Most High has you in remembrance, and the Mighty One has not forgotten you in your struggle. ⁴⁸ As for me, I have neither forsaken you nor withdrawn from you, but I have come to this place to pray on account of the desolation of Zion and to seek mercy on account of the humiliation of our^[a] sanctuary.^{(E) 49} Now go to your homes, every one of you, and after these days I will come to you.” ⁵⁰ So the people went into the city, as I told them to do. ⁵¹ But I sat in the field seven days, as the angel^[b] had commanded me, and I ate only of the flowers of the field, and plants were my food plants during those days.^(F)