2 Esdras 4:10-12

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹⁰ He said to me, “You cannot understand the things with which you have grown up; ¹¹ how, then, can your mind comprehend the way of the Most High?^[a] And how can one who is already worn out by the corrupt world understand incorruption?”^[b] When I heard this, I fell on my face^{[c](A) 12} and said to him, “It would have been better for us not to be here than to come here and live in ungodliness and to suffer and not understand why.”^(B)