¹³ Now therefore, set your house in order, and reprove your people; comfort the lowly among them, and instruct those that are wise.^[a] And now renounce the life that is corruptible, ¹⁴ and put away from you mortal thoughts; cast away from you the burdens of man, and divest yourself now of your weak nature, ¹⁵ and lay to one side the thoughts that are most grievous to you, and hasten to escape from these times. ¹⁶ For evils worse than those which you have now seen happen shall be done hereafter. ¹⁷ For the weaker the world becomes through old age, the more shall evils be multiplied among^[b] its inhabitants. ¹⁸ For truth shall go farther away, and falsehood shall come near. For the eagle^[c] which you saw in the vision is already hastening to come.”

Ezra’s Concern to Restore the Scriptures

¹⁹ Then I answered and said, “Let me speak in thy presence, Lord.^{[d] 20} For behold, I will go, as thou hast commanded me, and I will reprove the people who are now living; but who will warn those who will be born hereafter? For the world lies in darkness, and its inhabitants are without light. ²¹ For thy law has been burned, and so no one knows the things which have been done or will be done by thee. ²² If then I have found favor before thee, send the Holy Spirit into me, and I will write everything that has happened in the world from the beginning, the things which were written in thy law, that men may be able to find the path, and that those who wish to live in the last days may live.”

The Great Commandment

6 “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it; ² that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life; and that your days may be prolonged. ³ Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them; that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁴ “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord;^{[a] 5} and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; ⁷ and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ⁸ And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.