2 Esdras 10:12-14

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

¹² But if you say to me, “My lamentation is not like the earth’s, for I have lost the fruit of my womb, which I brought forth in pain and bore in sorrow; ¹³ but it is with the earth according to the way of the earth—the multitude that is now in it goes as it came”; ¹⁴ then I say to you, “Just as you brought forth in sorrow, so the earth also has from the beginning given her fruit, that is, humankind, to him who made her.”