2 Esdras 5:41-43

Revised Standard Version

Why Successive Generations Have Been Created

⁴¹ And I said, “Yet behold, O Lord, thou dost have charge of those who are alive at the end, but what will those do who were before us, or we, or those who come after us?”

⁴² He said to me, “I shall liken my judgment to a circle;^[a] just as for those who are last there is no slowness, so for those who are first there is no haste.”

⁴³ Then I answered and said, “Couldst thou not have created at one time those who have been and those who are and those who will be, that thou mightest show thy judgment the sooner?”