2 Esdras 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Lord speaks of the people he brought out of bondage, who would not listen to the prophets, and of the mother who tells her children to go and ask mercy; a woe is pronounced on Assur, and the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is held up as a warning. The Lord then tells Esdras that his people will be given the kingdom of Jerusalem, and speaks to the mother and her children with promises of resurrection, rest, and provision, along with commands about caring for the widow, the poor, the maimed, and the dead. Esdras says he was sent to Israel and was rejected, and therefore he addresses the nations, telling them to look for their shepherd. He then describes a vision on Mount Zion of a countless crowd being crowned by a tall young man, whom the angel identifies as the Son of God.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • The Lord says he brought this people out of bondage.
   • The Lord says he gave them his commandments through his servants the prophets.
   • The Lord says they refused to hear the prophets.
   • The Lord says they treated his counsels with contempt and made them void.
2. 2:2
   • The mother who bore these children speaks to them.
   • She tells her children to go their way.
   • She says she is a widow.
   • She says she is forsaken.
3. 2:3
   • She says she brought them up with gladness.
   • She says she lost them with sorrow and heaviness.
   • She says they sinned before the Lord God.
   • She says they did what is evil in her sight.
4. 2:4
   • She asks what she can now do for them.
   • She repeats that she is a widow and forsaken.
   • She tells her children to go their way.
   • She tells them to ask mercy of the Lord.
5. 2:5
   • The speaker calls upon the father as a witness concerning the mother of these children.
   • The speaker says the children refused to keep his covenant.
6. 2:6
   • The speaker asks that the father bring the children to confusion.
   • The speaker asks that their mother be given over to plunder.
   • The speaker asks that they have no offspring.
7. 2:7
   • The speaker asks that they be scattered among the nations.
   • The speaker asks that their names be blotted out of the earth.
   • The speaker says they despised his covenant.
8. 2:8
   • Woe is pronounced upon Assur.
   • Assur hides the unrighteous within itself.
   • Assur is addressed as a wicked people.
   • Assur is told to remember what the Lord did to Sodom and Gomorrah.
9. 2:9
   • The land of Sodom and Gomorrah lies in clods of pitch and heaps of ashes.
   • The Lord says he will do the same to those who do not hear him.
   • The saying is attributed to the Almighty Lord.
10. 2:10
    • The Lord speaks to Esdras.
    • The Lord tells Esdras to announce to his people that he will give them the kingdom of Jerusalem.
    • The Lord says he had intended to give that kingdom to Israel.
11. 2:11
    • The Lord says he will take their glory to himself.
    • The Lord says he will give these the everlasting tabernacles.
    • The Lord says he had prepared those tabernacles for them.
12. 2:12
    • They shall have the tree of life for a fragrant ointment.
    • They shall not labour.
    • They shall not be weary.
13. 2:13
    • They are told to go, and they shall receive.
    • They are told to pray that their days be few and shortened.
    • The kingdom is already prepared for them.
    • They are told to watch.
14. 2:14
    • Heaven and earth are called to bear witness.
    • The Lord says he has put away evil.
    • The Lord says he has created the good.
    • The Lord swears by his own life.
    • The saying is attributed to the Lord.
15. 2:15
    • The mother is told to embrace her children.
    • The mother is told to bring them up with gladness.
    • The mother is told to make their feet firm.
    • The Lord says he has chosen her.
    • The saying is attributed to the Lord.
16. 2:16
    • The Lord says he will raise up the dead again from their places.
    • The Lord says he will bring them out of the graves.
    • The Lord says he has known his name in Israel.
    • The Latin supplied for this verse is stray markup rather than text, so the content of this verse rests on the King James alone.
17. 2:17
    • The mother of the children is told not to fear.
    • The Lord says he has chosen her.
    • The saying is attributed to the Lord.
18. 2:18
    • The Lord says he will send his servants Esau and Jeremy for her help.
    • The Lord says that after their counsel he has sanctified and prepared twelve trees for her.
    • The twelve trees are laden with various fruits.
19. 2:19
    • The Lord has prepared as many fountains flowing with milk and honey.
    • The Lord has prepared seven mighty mountains.
    • Roses and lilies grow on those mountains.
    • The Lord will fill her children with joy by these things.
20. 2:20
    • She is told to do right to the widow.
    • She is told to give judgment for the fatherless.
    • She is told to give to the poor.
    • She is told to defend the orphan.
    • She is told to clothe the naked.
21. 2:21
    • She is told to heal the broken and the weak.
    • She is told not to laugh a lame man to scorn.
    • She is told to protect the maimed.
    • She is told to admit the blind man to the sight of the Lord's brightness.
22. 2:22
    • She is told to keep the old and the young safe within her walls.
23. 2:23
    • Wherever she finds the dead, she is to mark them and commit them to the grave.
    • The Lord will give her the first place in his resurrection.
24. 2:24
    • The people are told to stay still and take their rest.
    • Their rest is coming.
25. 2:25
    • The good nurse is told to nourish her children.
    • She is told to make their feet firm.
26. 2:26
    • The Lord has given her servants.
    • Not one of those servants will perish.
    • The Lord will require them from among her number.
27. 2:27
    • She is told not to be anxious.
    • A day of trouble and anguish will come.
    • On that day others will weep and be sorrowful.
    • On that day she will be glad and have abundance.
28. 2:28
    • The nations will envy her.
    • The nations will be able to do nothing against her.
    • The saying is attributed to the Lord.
29. 2:29
    • The Lord's hands will cover her.
    • Her children will not see hell.
30. 2:30
    • The mother is told to be joyful with her children.
    • The Lord says he will deliver her.
    • The saying is attributed to the Lord.
31. 2:31
    • She is told to remember her children that sleep.
    • The Lord will bring them out of the hidden places of the earth.
    • The Lord will show mercy to them.
    • The Lord says he is merciful.
    • The saying is attributed to the Lord Almighty.
32. 2:32
    • She is told to embrace her children until the Lord comes.
    • She is told to proclaim mercy to them.
    • The Lord's wells overflow.
    • The Lord's grace will not fail.
33. 2:33
    • Esdras says he received a charge from the Lord on Mount Horeb.
    • The charge was that he should go to Israel.
    • Esdras says that when he came to them they rejected him.
    • Esdras says they despised the commandment of the Lord.
34. 2:34
    • Esdras addresses the nations that hear and understand.
    • He tells them to look for their Shepherd.
    • The Shepherd will give them everlasting rest.
    • The one who will come at the end of the world is near at hand.
35. 2:35
    • They are told to be ready for the reward of the kingdom.
    • The everlasting light will shine upon them for ever.
36. 2:36
    • They are told to flee the shadow of this world.
    • They are told to receive the joy of their glory.
    • Esdras bears witness to his Saviour openly.
37. 2:37
    • They are told to receive what is entrusted to them by the Lord.
    • They are told to be glad and give thanks to him.
    • He has called them to the heavenly kingdom.
38. 2:38
    • They are told to arise and stand.
    • They are told to see the number of those sealed at the feast of the Lord.
39. 2:39
    • Those sealed have departed from the shadow of the world.
    • They have received glorious garments from the Lord.
40. 2:40
    • Sion is told to take her number.
    • Sion is told to close up the count of those of hers clothed in white.
    • Those clothed in white have fulfilled the law of the Lord.
41. 2:41
    • The number of her children whom she longed for is complete.
    • She is told to beseech the power of the Lord.
    • She is to ask that her people be made holy.
    • Her people were called from the beginning.
42. 2:42
    • Esdras saw a great multitude on Mount Sion.
    • Esdras could not number them.
    • They all praised the Lord with songs.
43. 2:43
    • In the midst of them was a young man of high stature.
    • He was taller than all of them.
    • He set crowns on the head of every one of them.
    • He was more exalted than they.
    • Esdras marvelled greatly at this.
44. 2:44
    • Esdras asked the angel who these were.
    • Esdras addressed the angel as lord.
45. 2:45
    • The angel answered Esdras.
    • The angel said these are those who have put off the mortal clothing.
    • The angel said they have put on the immortal.
    • The angel said they have confessed the name of God.
    • The angel said they are now crowned.
    • The angel said they receive palms.
46. 2:46
    • Esdras asked the angel who the young man is.
    • The young man sets crowns on them.
    • The young man gives palms into their hands.
47. 2:47
    • The angel answered that he is the Son of God.
    • They confessed him in the world.
    • Esdras began to commend those who stood strongly for the name of the Lord.
48. 2:48
    • The angel told Esdras to go his way.
    • The angel told Esdras to tell the Lord's people what kind of things he had seen.
    • The angel told Esdras to tell how great the wonders of the Lord his God were that he had seen.

Words Worth Explaining

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

2:1

Chapters 1 and 2 of this book survive only in Latin and are missing from the other ancient versions, so they are generally treated as a later preface attached to the older apocalypse that begins at chapter 3. "Menservants" in the King James simply means male servants, and "my servants the prophets" is a stock phrase from the Hebrew prophetic books for the long line of messengers sent to Israel.

2:2

Speaking of a city and its population as a mother and her children is standard prophetic language; Jerusalem, or Zion, is the mother here and the people are her children. A widow in this world had lost the man who gave her legal standing and protection, so "a widow and forsaken" pictures a city stripped of its defender and left with nothing to give her children.

2:5

The voice changes here without warning, and the Latin is ambiguous about who is speaking: it can be read as the mother appealing to God as "father," or as a second speaker calling God to witness against her. The King James "for a witness over the mother" can also mean a witness in addition to the mother, and translators divide on which is meant.

2:6

"A spoil" means plunder, the goods an army carries off from a captured town. To be made a spoil is to be stripped and looted.

2:7

"Heathen" is the King James word for the non-Israelite nations in general; it describes nationality rather than personal belief. Being "scattered abroad" among them means deportation and exile, the standard punishment threatened against Israel in the prophetic books.

2:8

"Assur" is Assyria, the empire that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel; in later writing its name is also used as a coded stand-in for whatever great power is currently oppressing the people. Sodom and Gomorrha are the two cities burned in the Genesis story, and by this period their names functioned as shorthand for total destruction.

2:9

"Pitch" is bitumen, a natural black tar. Lumps of it wash up around the Dead Sea, in the region where the ruined cities were traditionally located, which is why the land is described this way.

2:10

Esdras is the Greek and Latin form of the name Ezra, the priest and scribe of the Hebrew Bible. The book presents him as the one receiving these words.

2:11

"Tabernacles" means tents or dwellings; the word carries no sense of a church building. The pronouns are doing the work in this sentence: "their glory" is the honor that had belonged to Israel, and "these" are the new people spoken of in the previous verse.

2:12

The tree of life is the tree in the garden story of Genesis, whose fruit kept death away; in later Jewish writing it stands in paradise as a fixture of the world to come. "An ointment of sweet savour" means a sweet-smelling perfumed oil, so the tree is pictured as giving off fragrance rather than fruit here.

2:13

The request is that the time still to be waited through be cut short, not that the person praying die soon. The King James "pray for few days unto you" is a stiff rendering of the Latin, which asks that the remaining days be made few.

2:14

Calling the sky and the earth as witnesses is a legal formula from Israelite covenant language: the two oldest and most permanent things in existence are summoned to testify that an agreement was made. The Latin behind "I have broken the evil in pieces" is uncertain, and other readings give something like "I have left evil out," so the exact claim is disputed.

2:15

"Fast" here means firmly fixed in place, the sense still heard in "hold fast"; it has nothing to do with speed. The Latin of this line is corrupt, and where the King James saw a pillar, other readings have a dove, which is why modern translations differ so widely.

2:16

"I have known my name in Israel" is obscure in the Latin as well as in English. It seems to mean that God recognizes his own name as belonging to, or stamped upon, this people, but the wording is not clear enough to settle.

2:18

Most King James printings read "Esau" here, which is a long-standing misprint; the name in the Latin is Esaias, the Greek form of Isaiah. "Jeremy" is the older English form of Jeremiah. Both were prophets, which is why they can be sent as helpers.

2:19

"Milk and honey" is the standard biblical description of land rich enough to support herds and wild bees, used throughout the Hebrew Bible for the promised land. The twelve trees and twelve springs echo the oasis at Elim in Exodus, where the escaping Israelites found twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees.

2:20

The widow, the fatherless and the poor are a fixed trio in Israelite law: people with no man to represent them in court and no land of their own, and therefore the test case for whether a society's justice actually works. This list is written in the language of that legal duty, not of private charity.

2:21

Lame means unable to walk properly. Maimed means having lost the use of part of the body. In that world such people usually could not work and often had to beg.

2:22

Towns back then had high walls all around them. People stayed inside the walls to be safe.

2:23

Leaving a body unburied was the deepest disgrace that could be done to a person in this culture, and burying the unclaimed dead, even at personal risk, was treated as a high act of piety in Jewish writing of this period. That is the practice being urged here.

2:24

The King James "for thy quietness still come" is awkward English for a Latin phrase meaning that your rest will yet come, that is, it is still on its way. "Quietness" here means peace and freedom from harassment, not silence.

2:25

A nurse was a woman hired to feed and care for a small child. She was not always the child's mother.

2:26

"Require them from among thy number" uses the language of a head count: the one in charge will demand the full tally back and expects none to be missing. It is the image of a shepherd or steward answerable for every head entrusted to him.

2:29

The Latin word here is gehenna, from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place associated with burning that had become by this period a standard name for the place of punishment after death. The King James translates it "hell."

2:31

"Sleep" is a common ancient euphemism for being dead, and the children who sleep are the dead of the community. "The sides of the earth" renders a phrase meaning its innermost or hidden parts, the underground chambers where the dead were pictured as waiting.

2:33

"Oreb" is Horeb, the mountain where Moses received the law, called Sinai elsewhere in the Bible. Ezra lived centuries after Moses, so placing him there is the book's way of casting him as a second lawgiver rather than a point of chronology.

2:34

Calling a ruler the shepherd of his people was ordinary political language across the ancient Near East, describing someone responsible for feeding, guiding and defending those under him. "The end of the world" translates a word meaning age or era, so the phrase points to the close of the present period of history rather than the destruction of the planet.

2:36

"I testify my Saviour openly" is compressed King James English meaning "I publicly call my Savior as my witness," the same courtroom image used in verse 14.

2:38

A seal was a personal mark pressed into wax or clay to show ownership and to guarantee that something had not been tampered with. People described as sealed are marked as belonging to God and counted as his.

2:39

"The shadow of the world" contrasts the present age, insubstantial and passing, with the solid reality to come. Clean white clothing was festival dress and a sign of purity, and a change of garments given by a superior was a public honor.

2:40

Sion is Zion, the hill in Jerusalem, used as a name for the city and for its people; it is the mother addressed throughout this chapter. "Shut up those of thine" means close the reckoning and finish the tally, not shut anyone in.

2:41

Holy means set apart to belong to God.

2:43

The crowns here are wreaths of the kind given to winners of athletic contests and to honored guests at banquets, a mark of victory and celebration rather than royal rank.

2:45

Speaking of the body as clothing that can be taken off and exchanged is a common image in Greek-influenced Jewish and early Christian writing: what dies is put off, what does not die is put on. Palm branches were carried in processions celebrating a victory, the same gesture used to greet a triumphant general.

2:47

"Stood so stiffly" is high praise in 1611 English, meaning stood firm and refused to give way; the modern sense of stiff as awkward or cold is not present. "Commend" here means to praise aloud.