2 Esdras 2:1-14

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

God’s Judgment on Israel

2 “Thus says the Lord: I brought this people out of bondage, and I gave them commandments through my servants the prophets, but they would not listen to them and made my counsels void.^{(A) 2} The mother who bore them says to them, ‘Go, my children, because I am a widow and forsaken.^{(B) 3} I brought you up with gladness, but with mourning and sorrow I have lost you, because you have sinned before the Lord God and have done what is evil in my sight.^{[a] 4} But now what can I do for you? For I am a widow and forsaken. Go, my children, and ask for mercy from the Lord.’^{(C) 5} Now I call upon you, father, as a witness in addition to the mother of the children, because they would not keep my covenant, ⁶ so that you may bring confusion on them and bring their mother to ruin, so that they may have no offspring.^{(D) 7} Let them be scattered among the nations; let their names be blotted out from the earth, because they have despised my covenant.^(E)

⁸ “Woe to you, Assyria, who conceal the unrighteous within you! O wicked nation, remember what I did to Sodom and Gomorrah,^{(F) 9} whose land lies in lumps of pitch and heaps of ashes.^[b] That is what I will do to those who have not listened to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

¹⁰ Thus says the Lord to Ezra: “Tell my people that I^[c] will give them the kingdom of Jerusalem, which I was going to give to Israel. ¹¹ Moreover, I will take back to myself their glory and will give to them the everlasting habitations, which I had prepared for Israel. ¹² The tree of life shall give them fragrant perfume, and they shall neither toil nor become weary.^{(G) 13} Go^[d] and you will receive; pray that your days may be few, that they may be shortened. The kingdom is already prepared for you; be on the watch!^{(H) 14} Call, O call heaven and earth to witness: I set aside evil and created good, for I am the Living One, says the Lord.