2 Esdras 4:12-14

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

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.’

Parable of the Forest and the Sea

¹³ He answered me and said, ‘I went into a forest of trees of the plain, and they made a plan ¹⁴ and said, “Come, let us go and make war against the sea, so that it may recede before us and so that we may make for ourselves more forests.”