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2 Esdras 16: What the Passage Says

206 claims across 78 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Esdras 16 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter calls out trouble on Babylon, Asia, Egypt and Syria, and pictures the coming disasters as a sword, a fire and an arrow that no one can turn back. It describes famine, war, dead bodies left unburied, fields gone wild, and land so empty that only three or four people are left where searchers came with the sword. The Lord's people are told to prepare for battle and live as strangers, holding loosely to what they sell, buy, build, plant and marry, and are warned that God, who made and measured the world, knows every hidden sin. It closes with a great uprising against those who fear the Lord, who will be tested like gold in fire, and with a promise to rescue his beloved ones from those days.

Claim by Claim

  1. 16:1
    • Woe is pronounced upon Babylon.
    • Woe is pronounced upon Asia.
    • Woe is pronounced upon Egypt.
    • Woe is pronounced upon Syria.
  2. 16:2
    • They are commanded to put on sackcloth and garments of goats' hair.
    • They are commanded to wail for their children.
    • They are commanded to lament.
    • Their destruction is near.
  3. 16:3
    • A sword has been sent upon them.
    • No one is asked who can turn the sword back.
  4. 16:4
    • A fire has been sent upon them.
    • It is asked who can quench the fire.
  5. 16:5
    • Calamities have been sent upon them.
    • It is asked who can drive the calamities away.
  6. 16:6
    • It is asked whether anyone can drive away a hungry lion in the forest.
    • It is asked whether anyone can quench a fire in stubble once it has begun to burn.
  7. 16:7
    • It is asked whether anyone can turn back an arrow shot by a strong archer.
  8. 16:8
    • The Lord God sends the calamities.
    • It is asked who can drive them away.
  9. 16:9
    • A fire will go out from the Lord's wrath.
    • It is asked who can quench that fire.
  10. 16:10
    • The Lord will send out lightning.
    • It is asked who will not be afraid.
    • The Lord will thunder.
    • It is asked who will not tremble.
  11. 16:11
    • The Lord will threaten.
    • It is asked who will not be broken to pieces at his presence.
  12. 16:12
    • The earth quakes, along with its foundations.
    • The sea rises up with waves out of the deep.
    • The waves of the sea are troubled.
    • The fish of the sea are troubled.
    • This happens before the Lord.
    • This happens before the glory of his power.
  13. 16:13
    • His right hand that bends the bow is strong.
    • The arrows he shoots are sharp.
    • His arrows will not miss when they are shot toward the ends of the world.
  14. 16:14
    • The calamities have been sent out.
    • They will not turn back until they come upon the earth.
  15. 16:15
    • The fire is kindled.
    • It will not be put out until it consumes the foundation of the earth.
  16. 16:16
    • An arrow shot by a mighty archer does not return backward.
    • In the same way the calamities sent upon the earth will not return again.
  17. 16:17
    • The speaker cries woe upon himself twice.
    • The speaker asks who will deliver him in those days.
  18. 16:18
    • There will be a beginning of sorrows and great mournings.
    • There will be a beginning of famine and great death.
    • There will be a beginning of wars.
    • The powers will stand in fear.
    • There will be a beginning of evils.
    • The speaker asks what he will do when these evils come.
  19. 16:19
    • Famine is sent.
    • Plague is sent.
    • Tribulation and anguish are sent.
    • These are sent as scourges for correction.
  20. 16:20
    • Despite all these things they will not turn from their wickedness.
    • They will not keep the scourges in mind.
  21. 16:21
    • Food will be very cheap upon the earth.
    • Because of the cheap food they will think themselves to be well off.
    • Even then evils will grow upon the earth.
    • Those evils are sword, famine, and great confusion.
  22. 16:22
    • Many of those who dwell on earth will die of famine.
    • The sword will destroy those who escape the famine.
  23. 16:23
    • The dead will be thrown out like dung.
    • There will be no one to comfort them.
    • The earth will be laid waste.
    • The cities will be cast down.
  24. 16:24
    • No one will be left to till the earth.
    • No one will be left to sow it.
  25. 16:25
    • The trees will bear fruit.
    • It is asked who will gather the fruit.
  26. 16:26
    • The grapes will ripen.
    • It is asked who will tread them.
    • All places will be empty of people.
  27. 16:27
    • One man will long to see another man.
    • One man will long to hear another man's voice.
  28. 16:28
    • Out of a city ten people will be left.
    • Out of the field two will be left.
    • These survivors will have hidden themselves in the woods and in the clefts of the rocks.
  29. 16:29
    • In an olive orchard three or four olives are left on each tree.
  30. 16:30
    • When a vineyard is gathered, some clusters are left behind by those who search the vineyard diligently.
  31. 16:31
    • In those days three or four people will be left by those who search their houses with the sword.
  32. 16:32
    • The earth will be laid waste.
    • Its fields will grow old.
    • Its roads and all its paths will grow full of thorns.
    • The reason is that no one will travel through them.
  33. 16:33
    • The virgins will mourn because they have no bridegrooms.
    • The women will mourn because they have no husbands.
    • Their daughters will mourn because they have no helpers.
  34. 16:34
    • Their bridegrooms will be destroyed in the wars.
    • Their husbands will perish of famine.
  35. 16:35
    • The servants of the Lord are told to hear these things.
    • The servants of the Lord are told to understand them.
  36. 16:36
    • The word of the Lord is set before them.
    • They are told to receive it.
    • They are told not to believe the gods of whom the Lord spoke.
  37. 16:37
    • The calamities are drawing near.
    • The calamities are not delayed.
  38. 16:38
    • A woman with child in the ninth month brings forth her son.
    • Within two or three hours of her giving birth great pains surround her womb.
    • When the child comes out the pains do not slacken for a moment.
  39. 16:39
    • In the same way the calamities will not be slow to come upon the earth.
    • The world will mourn.
    • Sorrows will surround the world on every side.
  40. 16:40
    • The Lord tells his people to hear his word.
    • He tells them to make themselves ready for battle.
    • He tells them to be like strangers upon the earth in those evils.
  41. 16:41
    • He who sells is to be like one who flees away.
    • He who buys is to be like one who will lose what he buys.
  42. 16:42
    • He who trades in merchandise is to be like one who gets no profit from it.
    • He who builds is to be like one who will not live in the house.
  43. 16:43
    • He who sows is to be like one who will not reap.
    • He who prunes the vines is to be like one who will not gather the grapes.
  44. 16:44
    • Those who marry are to be like those who will have no children.
    • Those who do not marry are to be like the widowed.
  45. 16:45
    • Therefore those who labour labour in vain.
  46. 16:46
    • Strangers will reap their fruits.
    • Strangers will plunder their goods.
    • Strangers will overthrow their houses.
    • Strangers will take their children captive.
    • They will beget their children in captivity and famine.
  47. 16:47
    • Some trade in merchandise by robbery.
    • They adorn their cities, their houses, their possessions, and their own persons.
  48. 16:48
    • The more they adorn these things, the more the Lord will be angry with them for their sin.
    • The Lord says this.
  49. 16:49
    • A whore envies a thoroughly honest and virtuous woman.
  50. 16:50
    • In the same way righteousness will hate iniquity when iniquity adorns herself.
    • Righteousness will accuse iniquity to her face.
    • This will happen when he comes who will defend the one that diligently searches out every sin upon the earth.
  51. 16:51
    • They are told not to be like iniquity.
    • They are told not to be like iniquity's works.
  52. 16:52
    • After a little while iniquity will be taken away out of the earth.
    • Righteousness will reign among them.
  53. 16:53
    • The sinner is not to say that he has not sinned.
    • God will burn coals of fire upon the head of the one who says before the Lord God and his glory, 'I have not sinned.'
  54. 16:54
    • The Lord knows all the works of men.
    • The Lord knows their imaginations.
    • The Lord knows their thoughts.
    • The Lord knows their hearts.
  55. 16:55
    • He said, 'Let the earth be made.'
    • The earth was made.
    • He said, 'Let the heaven be made.'
    • The heaven was created.
  56. 16:56
    • The stars were made by his word.
    • He knows the number of the stars.
  57. 16:57
    • He searches the deep and its treasures.
    • He has measured the sea and what it holds.
  58. 16:58
    • He has shut the sea in the midst of the waters.
    • He has hung the earth upon the waters by his word.
  59. 16:59
    • He spreads out the heavens like a vault.
    • He has founded the heavens upon the waters.
  60. 16:60
    • He has made springs of water in the desert.
    • He has made pools on the tops of the mountains.
    • The purpose is that the floods might pour down from the heights to water the earth.
  61. 16:61
    • He made man.
    • He put man's heart in the middle of the body.
    • He gave man breath, life, and understanding.
  62. 16:62
    • He gave man the Spirit of Almighty God.
    • God made all things.
    • God searches out all hidden things in the secret places of the earth.
  63. 16:63
    • He knows their inventions.
    • He knows what they think in their hearts.
    • This includes those who sin and want to hide their sin.
  64. 16:64
    • The Lord has searched out all their works exactly.
    • He will put them all to shame.
  65. 16:65
    • Their sins will be brought forth.
    • They will be ashamed before men.
    • Their own sins will act as their accusers on that day.
  66. 16:66
    • It is asked what they will do.
    • It is asked how they will hide their sins before God and his angels.
  67. 16:67
    • God himself is the judge.
    • They are told to fear him.
    • They are told to leave off their sins.
    • They are told to forget their iniquities and never commit them again.
    • If they do, God will lead them forth.
    • God will deliver them from all trouble.
  68. 16:68
    • The burning wrath of a great multitude is kindled against them.
    • That multitude will carry off some of them.
    • That multitude will feed those taken with things offered to idols.
  69. 16:69
    • Those who consent to them will be held in derision.
    • Those who consent to them will be held in reproach.
    • Those who consent to them will be trodden under foot.
  70. 16:70
    • There will be a great insurrection in every place and in the neighbouring cities.
    • The insurrection will be against those who fear the Lord.
  71. 16:71
    • They will be like madmen.
    • They will spare no one.
    • They will keep on spoiling and destroying those who fear the Lord.
  72. 16:72
    • They will lay waste and take away the goods of those who fear the Lord.
    • They will cast them out of their houses.
  73. 16:73
    • Then it will be made known who are the Lord's chosen.
    • They will be tried like gold in the fire.
  74. 16:74
    • The Lord calls his beloved to hear.
    • The Lord says the days of trouble are at hand.
    • The Lord says he will deliver them from those days.
  75. 16:75
    • They are told not to be afraid.
    • They are told not to doubt.
    • God is their guide.
  76. 16:76
    • God is the guide of those who keep his commandments and precepts.
    • The Lord God says this.
    • They are told not to let their sins weigh them down.
    • They are told not to let their iniquities lift themselves up.
  77. 16:77
    • Woe is pronounced on those who are bound with their sins.
    • Woe is pronounced on those who are covered with their iniquities.
    • Such a person is like a field overgrown with bushes.
    • The path of that field is covered with thorns so that no one can travel through it.
  78. 16:78
    • That field is left untended.
    • It is cast into the fire to be consumed.

Words Worth Explaining

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

16:1
"Asia" here is the Roman province of Asia, the western end of what is now Turkey, not the continent. By the time this chapter was written, "Babylon" was a familiar code name for Rome, the ruling empire; the actual city had long been a ruin. Egypt and Syria were likewise Roman provinces. The list names the great centers of imperial wealth.
16:2
Sackcloth was coarse cloth woven from goat hair, the ordinary material of grain sacks. Wearing it against the skin was the standard, instantly recognizable public sign of grief or dread across the ancient Near East.
16:3
The sword stands for war. Saying a sword has been sent means armies are on the way.
16:6
Stubble is the stalks left standing in a field after the grain has been cut. Farmers burned it off, and such a fire runs across a field faster than anyone can beat it out.
16:7
An archer is a person who shoots arrows with a bow. Once the arrow leaves the bow, nobody can call it back.
16:12
"The deep" is the vast body of water thought to lie beneath and around the earth, the source of the sea and of springs.
16:15
Long ago people pictured the earth sitting on solid ground underneath. That is the part the fire burns here.
16:17
The speaking voice changes here without warning. Verses 1 to 16 address the doomed nations; here someone cries out in the first person. The text does not say who, whether the prophet or a representative of those who must live through the disasters.
16:18
"Sorrows" in this set phrase translates a word meaning birth pangs, the labor pains that announce something is already underway and cannot be stopped. The same image is spelled out at verse 38. "The powers" may mean earthly rulers and armies or the powers of the sky, sun, moon and stars; the wording allows both.
16:19
"Amendment" in 1611 English means correction or reform of a person. A scourge was a whip used in formal punishment.
16:21
"Good cheap" is 1611 English for low in price, and to be "in good case" is to be well off or in good shape. The point is that a season of cheap food will convince people the crisis has passed.
16:23
Leaving corpses unburied and heaped up like manure was the deepest dishonor the ancient world could imagine. Burying the dead was a family's most basic obligation, and no survivors are left to perform it.
16:26
Grapes were crushed by treading them barefoot in a stone vat, normally a crowded, noisy job at harvest time. The absence of treaders means the population itself is gone.
16:28
The numbers are the point: out of a whole city, ten survivors; out of the open farmland, two. "Clefts of the rocks" are the fissures and caves of the limestone hills, the standard hiding places in an invasion.
16:29
At harvest, olive trees were beaten with poles and vines picked over by hand, and whatever the pickers missed was left behind, by custom for the poor to glean. What remained on a stripped tree or vine was a scattering of three or four, which is the measure of survival being described.
16:30
Grape pickers went over the vines once, and a few bunches always stayed hidden. Poor people were allowed to come after and gather what was left.
16:31
"Search their houses with the sword" describes soldiers going through a town house by house, killing as they go.
16:32
"Wax old" is 1611 English for grow old. A field growing old means one nobody works any longer, so it reverts to scrub and briers. Some manuscripts read that no sheep pass along the paths rather than that no person travels through.
16:33
"Virgins" in the King James means unmarried young women of marriageable age; it is a description of social status, not a comment on character. A woman with no husband, son or male relative had no legal standing and no income, which is why the daughters are said to have no helpers.
16:35
A servant of the Lord is a person who belongs to God and obeys him.
16:36
The King James reads "believe not the gods of whom the Lord spake", but the underlying Latin is usually taken to mean do not disbelieve the things the Lord speaks about. The line is textually uncertain, and the two readings say nearly opposite things.
16:38
"With two or three hours of her birth" means within two or three hours of it. "Slack" here means delay or hold off.
16:40
"Pilgrims" in 1611 English does not mean religious travelers. It means resident foreigners, people living in a country not their own with no rights of citizenship and no permanent claim on anything around them.
16:41
Verses 41 to 44 run a single formula: act as though the thing you are doing had already been taken from you. The same construction appears in Paul's letter, 1 Corinthians 7:29 to 31. It is a rhetorical form, not a list of separate rules.
16:42
"Occupy" in 1611 English meant to trade in or do business with. "He that occupieth merchandise" is simply a merchant. The same use appears at verse 47.
16:43
Trimming the vines means cutting back the grape plants. Farmers did it so the plants would grow better fruit.
16:44
"Widowers" translates a word for the bereaved generally, husbands or wives who have lost a spouse. The unmarried are told to live as people who have already suffered that loss.
16:45
"They that labour labour in vain" is not a printing error. The first "labour" belongs to the phrase "those who work"; the second is the verb.
16:46
"Strangers" means foreigners, and here specifically invading armies. "In captivity and famine shall they get children" means their children will be conceived and born while they are prisoners and starving.
16:47
"Deck" in 1611 English means to adorn or decorate, so decking "their own persons" is dressing themselves in fine clothes and jewelry. Verses 47 and 48 form one sentence: the more they do this, the angrier the Lord becomes.
16:49
"Envieth" in 1611 English can mean to hate or feel hostility toward, not only to covet. The comparison also runs the other way in other versions of the text, with the virtuous woman hating the prostitute; the manuscripts differ on which way round it goes.
16:50
"Decketh herself" means dresses up and adorns herself. The second half of this verse is badly damaged in the manuscripts, and no reading of it is certain.
16:53
To "burn coals of fire upon his head" is a fixed idiom from the Hebrew scriptures, found at Proverbs 25:22 and Psalm 140:10, for bringing burning shame or punishment down on someone.
16:55
"Heaven" in older English means the sky, the visible arch overhead, not a place of the blessed. The wording deliberately echoes the opening of Genesis.
16:57
"Treasures" in 1611 English usually means treasuries or storehouses, the places where things are kept, rather than the valuables themselves.
16:58
This is the older picture of the world found in Genesis 1: the earth set like a platform over a great ocean beneath, with further water held back above the sky. To hang the earth upon the waters is to fix it in place over that lower ocean.
16:59
They pictured the sky as a solid dome, like a huge upside down bowl set over the earth.
16:61
In ancient usage the heart is the organ of thinking, remembering and deciding, the place where a person reasons and makes choices, not chiefly the seat of feeling.
16:62
Almighty means stronger than everyone and everything.
16:63
"Inventions" in 1611 English means the things a person devises or contrives, schemes and plans, not machines or discoveries.
16:64
"Exactly" here carries its older force of completely and precisely, leaving nothing out.
16:65
In court an accuser stood up and told the judge what a person had done. Here the sins themselves do the accusing.
16:66
Angels are God's messengers. They serve him and carry what he says.
16:67
Fear him here means treat him with deep respect and awe. It is not the same as being scared of the dark.
16:68
Meat from animals killed in pagan temples was sold in markets and served at meals in the ordinary way. For Jews and for Christians, eating it counted as taking part in the worship that produced it, so being fed it under compulsion meant being forced to abandon one's own religion. "Being idle" points to captives held without work, kept and fed rather than employed.
16:69
"Trodden under foot" means treated like dirt on the road.
16:70
"Next" in 1611 English means nearest. The cities in question are the neighboring ones.
16:73
Gold was purified by melting it so the impurities rose and could be skimmed away, and the same process showed how pure the metal actually was. The image is of testing and refining in one action.
16:74
"Chosen ones" means the people God picked to be his own.
16:76
Commands and rules are the things God told his people to do.
16:77
A field left alone fills up with thorn bushes in only a few seasons. After that no one can walk through it or grow anything in it.
16:78
To "dress" a field or a vine is to work it: prune, weed and clear it. An undressed field is one nobody tends. Farmers burned off the thorn and scrub that took over such ground, which is the picture in this last line.

Read 2 Esdras 16