2 Esdras 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Lord tells the prophet to speak and write down words of prophecy, and then announces disasters on the whole earth for its wickedness, promising to avenge innocent blood and to strike Egypt with plagues again. A long section describes fighting among peoples, with the dragons of Arabia, the Carmanians and the Assyrians, and with clouds and storms that batter the land and go on to Babylon. The chapter closes with a speech against Asia, who has made herself like Babylon, listing the disasters coming on her, her children, her cities and her land.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • The Lord commands the seer to speak the words of prophecy in the ears of his people.
   • The Lord says he will put those words in the seer's mouth.
   • The speaker of this command is identified as the Lord.
2. 15:2
   • The words are to be caused to be written on paper.
   • The reason given is that the words are faithful and true.
3. 15:3
   • The seer is told not to fear the plots devised against him.
   • The seer is told not to let the unbelief of those who speak against him trouble him.
4. 15:4
   • Every unbelieving person will die in his unbelief.
5. 15:5
   • The Lord says he is bringing evils upon the world.
   • The evils named are sword, famine, death, and destruction.
6. 15:6
   • Wickedness has polluted the whole earth beyond measure.
   • Their hurtful works have been completed.
7. 15:7
   • Therefore the Lord speaks.
8. 15:8
   • The Lord will keep silent no longer about their wickedness, which they commit profanely.
   • The Lord will not tolerate them in the things they wickedly practice.
   • Innocent and righteous blood cries out to the Lord.
   • The souls of the righteous cry out continually.
9. 15:9
   • The Lord says he will surely avenge them.
   • The Lord will receive to himself all the innocent blood from among them.
10. 15:10
    • The Lord's people are led like a flock to the slaughter.
    • The Lord will no longer allow them to dwell in the land of Egypt.
11. 15:11
    • The Lord will bring them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
    • The Lord will strike Egypt with plagues as he did before.
    • The Lord will destroy all the land of Egypt.
12. 15:12
    • Egypt will mourn.
    • Egypt's foundations will be struck with the plague and punishment that God will bring upon it.
13. 15:13
    • Those who till the ground will mourn.
    • Their seeds will fail.
    • The failure comes through blight and hail and a terrible star.
14. 15:14
    • Woe is pronounced on the world and on those who dwell in it.
15. 15:15
    • The sword and their destruction draw near.
    • One nation will rise up and fight against another.
    • They will have swords in their hands.
16. 15:16
    • There will be sedition among men.
    • Men will invade one another.
    • They will not respect their kings or their princes.
    • The course of their actions will stand in their own power.
    • The Latin supplied beside this verse is not text of the verse, so these claims rest on the King James alone.
17. 15:17
    • A man will desire to go into a city and will not be able to.
18. 15:18
    • Because of their pride the cities will be thrown into confusion.
    • The houses will be destroyed.
    • Men will be afraid.
19. 15:19
    • A man will have no pity on his neighbor.
    • He will destroy their houses with the sword.
    • He will plunder their goods.
    • The cause is lack of bread and great tribulation.
20. 15:20
    • God says he will call together all the kings of the earth to stir them up.
    • These kings are from the rising of the sun, from the south, from the east, and from Libanus.
    • They are called to turn against one another.
    • They are called to repay the things that were done to them.
21. 15:21
    • As they do to this day to the Lord's chosen, so the Lord will do to them.
    • The Lord will repay into their bosom.
    • These are the words of the Lord God.
22. 15:22
    • The Lord's right hand will not spare the sinners.
    • The Lord's sword will not cease over those who shed innocent blood upon the earth.
23. 15:23
    • Fire has gone out from his wrath.
    • The fire has consumed the foundations of the earth.
    • The fire has consumed the sinners like kindled straw.
24. 15:24
    • Woe is pronounced on those who sin and do not keep the Lord's commandments.
    • The speaker is the Lord.
25. 15:25
    • The Lord will not spare them.
    • The apostate children are commanded to depart.
    • They are commanded not to defile the Lord's sanctuary.
26. 15:26
    • The Lord knows all those who sin against him.
    • Therefore he delivers them to death and slaughter.
27. 15:27
    • The evils have now come upon the whole earth.
    • Those addressed will remain in those evils.
    • God will not deliver them.
    • The reason is that they have sinned against him.
28. 15:28
    • There is a horrible vision.
    • The appearance of it comes from the east.
29. 15:29
    • The nations of the dragons of Arabia will come out with many chariots.
    • Their hissing is carried over the earth from the day they set out.
    • All who hear them will fear and tremble.
30. 15:30
    • The Carmanians, raging in wrath, will go forth like wild boars of the wood.
    • They will come with great power.
    • They will join battle with them.
    • They will lay waste a portion of the land of the Assyrians.
31. 15:31
    • After this the dragons will prevail, remembering their own nature and origin.
    • A condition is stated: if they turn themselves and conspire together in great power to persecute them.
32. 15:32
    • Then these will be thrown into confusion.
    • They will keep silent before the others' power.
    • They will turn and flee.
33. 15:33
    • From the territory of the Assyrians an ambusher will lie in wait for them.
    • He will destroy some of them.
    • There will be fear and dread in their army.
    • There will be strife among their kings.
34. 15:34
    • There are clouds from the east and from the north as far as the south.
    • Their appearance is very horrible.
    • They are full of wrath and storm.
35. 15:35
    • They will clash against one another.
    • They will pour down a great multitude of stars upon the earth, including their own star.
    • Blood from the sword will reach up to the horse's belly.
36. 15:36
    • There will be dung of men up to the camel's hock.
37. 15:37
    • There will be great fearfulness and trembling upon the earth.
    • Those who see that wrath will be terrified.
    • Trembling will seize them.
38. 15:38
    • Then great storms will come from the south and from the north.
    • Another part will come from the west.
39. 15:39
    • Strong winds will arise from the east.
    • The winds will open it.
    • The cloud which he raised up in wrath will be destroyed.
    • The star stirred up to cause terror toward the east and west wind will be destroyed.
40. 15:40
    • Great and mighty clouds, full of wrath, will be lifted up together with the star.
    • Their purpose is to destroy all the earth and those who dwell in it.
    • They will pour out a terrible star over every high and lofty place.
41. 15:41
    • They will pour out fire, hail, flying swords, and many waters.
    • All the fields and all the rivers will be filled with the abundance of those waters.
42. 15:42
    • They will break down the cities and walls.
    • They will break down mountains and hills.
    • They will break down the trees of the wood and the grass of the meadows and their grain.
43. 15:43
    • They will go on steadily as far as Babylon.
    • They will destroy her.
44. 15:44
    • They will come to her and surround her.
    • They will pour out the star and all wrath upon her.
    • Dust and smoke will go up to heaven.
    • All those around her will mourn for her.
45. 15:45
    • Those who remain under her will serve those who destroyed her.
46. 15:46
    • Asia is addressed as a sharer in the appearance of Babylon.
    • Asia is addressed as the glory of Babylon's person.
47. 15:47
    • Woe is pronounced on Asia, called a wretch.
    • The reason is that she has made herself like Babylon.
    • She has decked her daughters out in whoredom.
    • The purpose was that they might please and glory in her lovers.
    • Those lovers have always desired to commit whoredom with her.
48. 15:48
    • Asia has imitated the hateful one in all her works and inventions.
    • Therefore God speaks.
49. 15:49
    • God will send evils upon her: widowhood, poverty, famine, sword, and pestilence.
    • These will lay waste her houses.
    • These will bring her to destruction and death.
50. 15:50
    • The glory of her power will be dried up like a flower.
    • Heat will arise that is sent upon her.
51. 15:51
    • She will be weakened and made poor by the blow.
    • She will be scourged with wounds.
    • She will not be able to receive her mighty ones and her lovers.
52. 15:52
    • The Lord asks whether he would have acted against her with such jealousy.
53. 15:53
    • The condition is that she had always slain his chosen.
    • She exulted, striking her hands together.
    • She spoke over their dead while she was drunk.
54. 15:54
    • The words she spoke were a command to adorn the beauty of her face.
55. 15:55
    • The wages of her whoredom will be in her bosom.
    • Therefore she will receive repayment.
56. 15:56
    • As she does to the Lord's chosen, so God will do to her.
    • The speaker is the Lord.
    • God will deliver her into evils.
57. 15:57
    • Her children will die of hunger.
    • She herself will fall by the sword.
    • Her cities will be broken down.
    • All her people in the field will fall by the sword.
58. 15:58
    • Those in the mountains will die of hunger.
    • They will eat their own flesh.
    • They will drink their own blood.
    • The cause is hunger for bread and thirst for water.
59. 15:59
    • She, being unhappy, will come through the sea.
    • She will receive evils again.
60. 15:60
    • In passing through, they will rush upon the idle city.
    • They will destroy some portion of her land.
    • They will consume part of her glory.
    • They will return to Babylon, which was destroyed.
61. 15:61
    • She will be crushed by them like stubble.
    • They will be to her as fire.
62. 15:62
    • They will consume her, her cities, her land, and her mountains.
    • They will burn all her woods and her fruit-bearing trees with fire.
63. 15:63
    • They will carry her children away captive.
    • They will plunder what she has.
    • They will mar the beauty of her face.

Words Worth Explaining

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

15:1

Chapters 15 and 16 are an appendix to 2 Esdras. They survive only in Latin (and in later Arabic and Coptic fragments), are absent from the Greek and Eastern versions of the book, and are a separate prophecy from the visions of Ezra in chapters 3 to 14. Scholars often call them 6 Ezra. Here the Lord speaks directly throughout, rather than through the angel of the earlier chapters.

15:2

The "paper" is papyrus, sheets made by pressing strips of a reed together, the ordinary writing material of the ancient Mediterranean. It is not paper of wood pulp, which was unknown there.

15:3

"Imaginations" in the King James means plots and schemes devised against you, not daydreams or fantasies. "Incredulity" is simply refusal to believe.

15:5

"Plagues" in the King James is a general word for disasters or blows of any kind and does not mean disease in particular. The four listed, sword, famine, death and destruction, are a standard set of calamities in prophetic writing: war, hunger, dying and ruin.

15:6

"Their hurtful works are fulfilled" uses the old idea of a measure being filled. Wrongdoing was pictured as accumulating until it reached a fixed amount, at which point judgment falls.

15:8

"Suffer" in the King James means allow or put up with, and carries no idea of pain. The same use returns in verse 10, "I will not suffer them now to dwell".

15:9

The image comes from Genesis 4, where the blood of a murdered man cries out to God from the ground. For God to "receive unto me" the innocent blood means to take the case into his own hands and settle the account himself.

15:10

Sheep led away to be killed do not know what is coming. The picture is of people who are helpless.

15:11

"A mighty hand and a stretched out arm" is the fixed phrase used all through Exodus and Deuteronomy for God bringing Israel out of Egypt. Its use here signals that what is coming is meant to be read as a second exodus, with Egypt struck by plagues "as before".

15:13

"A fearful constellation" does not mean a pattern of stars in the modern sense. Ancient weather language held that the stars sent the weather, so the word stands for a destructive storm or spell of ruinous weather. "Blasting" is blight, a scorching that withers a crop in the field.

15:14

The King James begins, "Woe to the world." Woe is a cry of grief and warning, like shouting "How terrible for you!"

15:16

"Sedition" is armed revolt against the ruling authority. "Princes" in the King James means the leading men and nobles of a state, not the sons of a king. The last clause means that nothing will govern people's conduct except their own strength.

15:17

Cities were ringed by walls with gates. In a war the gates were shut, and a traveler could be locked out.

15:19

To "spoil" goods is to strip a place and carry off what is in it as plunder. The word has nothing to do with ruining something, and returns in verse 63.

15:20

Libanus is the Latin form of Lebanon, the mountain range north of Israel. The list mixes compass directions with one named region, and names the east twice, so it reads as a sweep meaning everywhere. The Latin behind "to reverence me" is uncertain; some manuscripts and modern versions read a word meaning to stir up or rouse, which would make the kings the ones being stirred against each other rather than summoned to honor God.

15:21

The "bosom" is the fold of a loose outer garment above the belt, used as a pocket and also as a measure for grain. To repay into someone's bosom is to hand the full amount over to them in person. The phrase returns in verse 55.

15:22

The right hand stood for a person's strength, because most people fight and work with it.

15:23

The speaker shifts here from God saying "I" to a description of God in the third person, "his wrath". The change is in the Latin and is common in this kind of prophetic writing; it is not a different speaker being introduced.

15:25

The Latin of this line is uncertain and the manuscripts differ. The King James reads it as an order to children to get away from "the power", while other manuscripts have a word meaning rebellious or faithless, giving "Go your way, you rebellious children". "Sanctuary" is the temple, the holy building itself.

15:29

The Latin word is draco, which covers large serpents as well as the fabulous dragon. "The dragons of Arabia" names peoples to the east and south under a monstrous image, though the passage then treats them as a real army with chariots. Some manuscripts say their hissing is carried over the earth, which fits the serpent picture; the text the King James followed read "multitude" instead.

15:30

Carmania was a province on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf, roughly the Kerman region of southeastern Iran today. "The Assyrians" by this date was a literary name for whoever held Mesopotamia, not the Assyrian empire that fell in 612 BC.

15:31

"Remembering their nature" means falling back on what they are by breed, the serpent's way of fighting. Be warned that the pronouns in verses 31 to 33 are hard to follow: "they", "them" and "these" shift between the dragons, the Carmanians and those attacked, and the Latin does not make clear which is meant where.

15:32

The 1611 printing reads "shall be troubled bled", with a syllable accidentally set twice by the compositor. The sentence is simply "then these shall be troubled".

15:33

"Host" means an army in the field, the whole body of fighting men.

15:35

The Latin word the King James renders "star" is sidus, which means a heavenly body but also the weather that body was believed to send, that is, a tempest. That is why this verse and verses 39 to 44 read as storm rather than star in plainer versions, and why the King James can speak of pouring a star out over a city. "Blood ... unto the belly" is a stock measure of slaughter, blood standing as deep as a horse's belly; some manuscripts say horse outright.

15:36

"Hough" is the older spelling of hock, the sharply angled joint partway up the hind leg of a four footed animal. On a camel it stands well above the ground, so the line raises the measure of verse 35 still higher.

15:39

The Latin of this verse is confused and the manuscripts disagree, so translations differ widely over what is opened, what is destroyed, and which wind drives what. The obscurity is in the source text, not in the rendering.

15:42

"Corn" in the King James means grain of any kind, chiefly wheat and barley. It does not mean maize, which was unknown in Europe when the translation was made.

15:43

In Jewish and Christian writing of the first centuries AD, Babylon was a familiar cover name for Rome, the empire that had destroyed Jerusalem and its temple as Babylon had done centuries before. Readers of this chapter would have heard the name that way.

15:44

To surround a city was to camp all around it so no food or help could get in. That is called a siege, and it could last for months.

15:45

To "do service unto" someone is to be held in subjection to them as slaves or forced laborers, the ordinary fate of a conquered population.

15:46

Asia here is the Roman province of Asia, the western part of what is now Turkey, a rich region of cities such as Ephesus and Smyrna. It is not the continent.

15:47

Ancient writers regularly spoke of a city or province as a woman, and of her dealings with foreign powers and their gods as prostitution. "Decked thy daughters in whoredom" pictures the lesser cities of the province being dressed up and offered to the same patrons.

15:49

A widow is a woman whose husband has died. A city left "a widow" means a city left alone, with nobody to protect it.

15:51

"Stripes" in old English means the marks left on skin after a beating. It does not mean colored lines.

15:52

"Jealousy" here has its older and stronger sense, the anger of a husband whose wife has been unfaithful, which fits the marriage picture running through these verses. The sentence is a question expecting the answer no: I would not have moved against you like this if you had not done what follows.

15:53

"Exalting the stroke of thine hands" is ambiguous in the Latin. It can mean lifting your hands to deliver the blow, or lifting them in applause over the killing, and translators have gone both ways.

15:54

This is the taunt spoken over the dead bodies in verse 53. "Set forth the beauty of thy countenance" is roughly make up your face and look your best, a gloating call to celebrate. The exact sense of the Latin is disputed.

15:55

The "reward" is a prostitute's fee, dropped into the fold of clothing at the waist that served as a pocket. See the note at verse 21.

15:58

Eating one's own flesh and drinking one's own blood is stock language for the last stage of famine in a besieged town. Whether it pictures cannibalism within one's own family or is a figure for a people destroying itself is left open by the text.

15:59

"Unhappy" in 1611 English means unlucky or wretched, struck by misfortune. It is stronger than merely sad.

15:60

"Idle" here means at rest and off its guard rather than lazy: a city going about its business and taken by surprise. Some manuscripts have a word meaning hateful instead, which is why versions differ at this point.

15:61

"Stubble" is the short dry stalks left standing in a field after the harvest, which farmers burned off. It was a common image for something consumed instantly.

15:63

A winning army marched its captives back to its own country, often to work as slaves. That is what being carried away captive means.