2 Esdras 8:42-44

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

⁴² I answered and said, ‘If I have found favour in your sight, let me speak. ⁴³ If the farmer’s seed does not come up, because it has not received your rain in due season, or if it has been ruined by too much rain, it perishes.^{[a] 44} But people, who have been formed by your hands and are called your own image because they are made like you, and for whose sake you have formed all things—have you also made them like the farmer’s seed?