For Teaching

2 Esdras 14: What the Passage Says

132 claims across 48 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Esdras 14 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

On the third day a voice from a bush calls to Esdras, recalls how God spoke to Moses and told him what to publish and what to hide, and tells Esdras to store up the signs and dreams he has received, since he will be taken from all people and remain with God's Son until the times end. Esdras is told to set his house in order and hurry away from these times, and he answers that the law has been burned and asks for the Holy Spirit so he can write it all again. God sends him to dismiss the people for forty days and to take five swift scribes; Esdras drinks a cup that looks like water but is the color of fire, and dictates for forty days. Books are written, the first of them to be published openly and the last seventy to be kept for the wise.

Claim by Claim

14:1
- On the third day Esdras sat under an oak.
- A voice came out of a bush opposite him.
- The voice said, Esdras, Esdras.
14:2
- Esdras said, Here am I, Lord.
- Esdras stood up on his feet.
14:3
- He said to Esdras that he had revealed himself openly to Moses in the bush.
- He said he talked with Moses.
- He said this happened when his people were in servitude in Egypt.
14:4
- He said he sent Moses.
- He said he led his people out of Egypt.
- He said he brought Moses up to the mountain (the King James text here is defective and does not name the mountain).
- He said he kept Moses with him for a long time.
14:5
- He said he told Moses many wondrous things.
- He said he showed Moses the secrets of the times.
- He said he showed Moses the end.
- He said he commanded Moses.
14:6
- He commanded Moses to declare certain words.
- He commanded Moses to hide certain other words.
14:7
- He said he was now speaking to Esdras.
14:8
- He told Esdras to lay up in his heart the signs that he had shown.
- He told Esdras to lay up in his heart the dreams that Esdras had seen.
- He told Esdras to lay up in his heart the interpretations that Esdras had heard.
14:9
- He said Esdras would be taken away from all.
- He said that from then on Esdras would remain with his Son.
- He said Esdras would remain with those who are like Esdras.
- He said this would last until the times are ended.
14:10
- The world has lost its youth.
- The times are beginning to grow old.
14:11
- The world is divided into twelve parts.
- Ten of its parts are already gone.
- Half of a tenth part is also gone.
14:12
- What remains is what comes after the half of the tenth part.
14:13
- He told Esdras to set his house in order.
- He told Esdras to reprove his people.
- He told Esdras to comfort those of them who are in trouble.
- He told Esdras to renounce corruption now.
14:14
- He told Esdras to let mortal thoughts go from him.
- He told Esdras to cast away the burdens of man.
- He told Esdras to put off his weak nature now.
14:15
- He told Esdras to set aside the thoughts that weigh most heavily on him.
- He told Esdras to hurry to flee from these times.
14:16
- Evils greater than those Esdras has seen happen will be done hereafter.
14:17
- The weaker the world becomes through age, the more evils will increase upon those who dwell in it.
14:18
- The time has fled far away.
- Falsehood is close at hand.
- The vision that Esdras saw is now hastening to come.
14:19
- Esdras answered before the Lord and spoke.
14:20
- Esdras said he would go as he had been commanded.
- Esdras said he would reprove the people who are present.
- Esdras asked who would admonish those who will be born afterward.
- Esdras said the world is set in darkness.
- Esdras said those who dwell in the world are without light.
14:21
- Esdras said God's law has been burnt.
- Esdras said that because of this no one knows the things that are done by God.
- Esdras said no one knows the work that will begin.
14:22
- Esdras asked, if he has found grace before God, that God send the Holy Ghost into him.
- Esdras said he would then write all that has been done in the world since the beginning.
- Esdras said those things were written in God's law.
- Esdras said the purpose is that men may find God's path.
- Esdras said the purpose is that those who will live in the latter days may live.
14:23
- God answered Esdras.
- God told Esdras to go.
- God told Esdras to gather the people together.
- God told Esdras to tell them not to seek him for forty days.
14:24
- God told Esdras to prepare many writing tablets of boxwood.
- God told Esdras to take with him Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ecanus and Asiel.
- God said these five are ready to write swiftly.
14:25
- God told Esdras to come there.
- God said he would light a candle of understanding in Esdras's heart.
- God said that candle would not be put out until the things Esdras would begin to write were completed.
14:26
- God said that when Esdras had finished, he should publish some things.
- God said Esdras should show some things secretly to the wise.
- God said Esdras would begin to write at that hour the next day.
14:27
- Esdras went out as he had been commanded.
- Esdras gathered all the people together.
- Esdras spoke to them.
14:28
- Esdras told Israel to hear these words.
14:29
- Esdras said their fathers at the beginning were strangers in Egypt.
- Esdras said they were delivered from Egypt.
14:30
- Esdras said they received the law of life.
- Esdras said they did not keep it.
- Esdras said the people he was addressing had also transgressed it after them.
14:31
- Esdras said the land of Sion was then divided among them by lot.
- Esdras said their fathers had done unrighteousness.
- Esdras said they themselves had done unrighteousness.
- Esdras said they had not kept the ways the Highest commanded them.
14:32
- Esdras said God is a righteous judge.
- Esdras said God took from them in due time what he had given them.
14:33
- Esdras said they are now here.
- Esdras said their brethren are among them.
14:34
- Esdras said that if they subdue their own understanding and reform their hearts, they will be kept alive.
- Esdras said that after death they will obtain mercy.
14:35
- Esdras said the judgment will come after death.
- Esdras said that then we shall live again.
- Esdras said the names of the righteous will then be made manifest.
- Esdras said the works of the ungodly will be declared.
14:36
- Esdras told them that no one should come to him now.
- Esdras told them not to seek him for these forty days.
14:37
- Esdras took the five men as he had been commanded.
- They went into the field.
- They remained there.
14:38
- On the next day a voice called Esdras.
- The voice told Esdras to open his mouth.
- The voice told Esdras to drink what it would give him to drink.
14:39
- Esdras opened his mouth.
- A full cup was held out to him.
- The cup was full of something like water.
- The colour of it was like fire.
14:40
- Esdras took the cup and drank.
- After he drank, his heart uttered understanding.
- Wisdom grew in his breast.
- His spirit strengthened his memory.
14:41
- Esdras's mouth was opened.
- His mouth was shut no more.
14:42
- The Highest gave understanding to the five men.
- They wrote the wonderful visions of the night that were told to them.
- They did not know the things they wrote.
- They sat for forty days.
- They wrote during the day.
- At night they ate bread.
14:43
- Esdras spoke during the day.
- Esdras did not keep silent at night.
14:44
- In forty days they wrote two hundred and four books.
14:45
- When the forty days were completed, the Highest spoke.
- The Highest told Esdras to publish openly the first books he had written.
- The Highest said this was so that the worthy and the unworthy might read them.
14:46
- The Highest told Esdras to keep back the last seventy books.
- The Highest said Esdras should deliver those only to the wise among the people.
14:47
- The Highest said that in those books is the spring of understanding.
- The Highest said in them is the fountain of wisdom.
- The Highest said in them is the stream of knowledge.
14:48
- Esdras did so.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

14:1: Esdras is the Greek and Latin form of the Hebrew name Ezra. The book presents its speaker as the scribe Ezra, and sets him in Babylon a generation after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. "The third day" counts from the vision reported in the previous chapter.
14:3: The reference is to Exodus 3, where God speaks to Moses out of a bush that burns without being consumed. In the King James phrase "when my people served in Egypt," "served" does not mean worship; it means they worked there as slaves.
14:4: The King James reads "the mount of" and then simply breaks off: a word has dropped out of the manuscripts the translators were working from. Other copies name the place, Mount Sinai.
14:6: A long standing Jewish tradition held that at Sinai Moses received both a law to be published to everyone and further revelation to be kept back for a few. This book draws on that tradition to account for its own existence as restricted writing.
14:8: "Heart" in this idiom is the seat of thought and memory rather than of feeling; it is closer to what modern English calls the mind.
14:9: "Taken away" here means removed from ordinary human life without dying in the usual way, as Enoch and Elijah were said to have been. "My Son" is this book's regular way of speaking of the messiah figure who appeared in its earlier visions.
14:10: "The world hath lost his youth": in 1611 English "his" was the ordinary possessive for "it" as well as for "he." The sense is that the world has lost its youth.
14:11: The whole span of history is measured out as twelve parts, of which ten and a half have already run; history is therefore in its last stretch. The Latin copies disagree about exactly how much is left, and verse 12 in other versions reads that two parts remain after the middle of the tenth.
14:13: "Set thine house in order" is the standard phrase for a man told he is about to die and should settle his affairs; compare Isaiah 38:1. "Renounce corruption" does not mean giving up dishonesty: corruption here means decay, the perishable condition of mortal life.
14:14: "Put off" is like taking off a coat. He is being told to leave behind his weak human body and his human worries.
14:18: "Leasing" is an old English word for lying or falsehood, with no connection to the modern sense of renting. In the first half of the verse other copies read that truth has withdrawn far away, which is the contrast the second half expects. The vision hurrying to come is the eagle seen in chapters 11 and 12.
14:19: The sentence shifts abruptly into addressing God directly. Words appear to have dropped out; other copies read "Let me speak in your presence, O Lord."
14:21: When the Babylonians burned the temple in 587 BC, the scrolls of the law were held to have burned with it. The tradition behind this chapter is that the scriptures were lost then and dictated afresh through Ezra.
14:22: "Holy Ghost" is the King James phrase for the Holy Spirit. In 1611 "ghost" simply meant spirit and carried none of its later associations with hauntings.
14:23: The forty days match the forty days Moses spent with God on the mountain in Exodus 24 and 34.
14:24: The King James "box trees" is a misreading of the Latin, which means tablets of boxwood: thin wooden boards coated with wax and written on with a stylus, the ordinary notebook of the ancient world. The five named men are professional scribes, and "ready to write swiftly" means trained in a fast shorthand.
14:25: "Candle" in the King James almost always means an oil lamp, a small clay dish of oil with a wick, not a wax candle.
14:26: Circulating one set of books openly while restricting another to a trained few was a recognized practice. Writings of this kind commonly present themselves as reserved for the wise.
14:28: Israel is the name for the whole people, all the families descended from Jacob, who was also called Israel.
14:29: "Strangers" here means foreigners: people living in a country that was not their own.
14:30: The law of life means the law God gave Moses at Sinai, the rules found in the first five books of the Bible.
14:31: "Sion" is the King James spelling of Zion, first a hill in Jerusalem and then a name for the city and for the land as a whole. Dividing land "by lot" means assigning it by drawing marked stones or sticks, the method used to allot territory to the tribes in Joshua.
14:32: What he had given and then took back is the land itself, lost when Babylon conquered Judah and deported its people.
14:33: Brothers here means all the people of Israel, not just boys from one family.
14:35: "Righteous" means people who did what was right. "Ungodly" means people who lived as though God did not matter.
14:39: Drinking the cup is a picture of taking God's words inside himself. The prophet Ezekiel was told to eat a scroll in much the same way.
14:42: The King James has the scribes writing visions "which they knew not." The Latin says instead that they wrote in characters they did not know, that is, in an unfamiliar alphabet: they take down sounds they cannot themselves read.
14:44: Most copies read ninety four books, a figure the following verses divide into twenty four to be published and seventy to be held back. Twenty four is the traditional Jewish count of the books of the Hebrew Bible. The King James follows a copy that reads two hundred and four.
14:45: The books to be published openly are the twenty four of the Hebrew scriptures, counted as Jewish tradition counts them, with the twelve minor prophets as a single book and Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah each as one.
14:46: The seventy withheld books stand for apocalyptic writings, this one among them, presented as reserved for a few rather than read in public.
14:47: A spring is where water comes up out of the ground. This is picture talk. The books give wisdom the way a spring gives water.

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