2 Esdras 4:12-14

Common English Bible

¹² and said to him, “It would have been better not to have come into being than to come here, live in the middle of wickedness, suffer, and not understand why.”

¹³ He answered me: “I went forth to a forest of trees on the plain,^[a] and they devised a plan ¹⁴ and said: ‘Come, let’s go and make war on the sea so that it may recede before us, and let’s make for ourselves more forests.’