2 Esdras 4:12-14

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

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.”^(A)

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^{(B) 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.’