2 Esdras 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The one speaking to Esdras says that everything was made through him alone, before the world had any of its parts, and that it will be ended by him alone. He answers a question about the dividing of the times with Esau and Jacob, and then a voice like many waters lists the signs that will come when the affliction of Zion is complete. Esdras is told to fast seven more days; on the eighth night he goes back over the six days of creation and asks why, if the world was made for his people's sake, they do not possess it as an inheritance.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • He said to Esdras that in the beginning the earth was made.
   • This was before the borders of the world stood.
   • This was before the winds blew.
2. 6:2
   • This was before there was thunder and lightning.
   • This was before the foundations of paradise were laid.
3. 6:3
   • This was before the fair flowers were seen.
   • This was before the powers of movement were established.
   • This was before the innumerable multitude of angels was gathered together.
4. 6:4
   • This was before the heights of the air were lifted up.
   • This was before the measures of the firmament were named.
   • This was before the chimneys in Sion were hot.
5. 6:5
   • This was before the present years were sought out.
   • This was before the devices of those who now sin were turned away.
   • This was before those who have gathered faith for a treasure were sealed.
6. 6:6
   • Then he considered these things.
   • They were all made through him alone.
   • They were made through no other.
   • By him also they shall be ended.
   • They shall be ended by no other.
7. 6:7
   • Esdras answered and asked what the parting asunder of the times would be.
   • Esdras asked when the end of the first age and the beginning of the age that follows would be.
8. 6:8
   • He said the span runs from Abraham to Isaac.
   • Jacob and Esau were born of him.
   • Jacob's hand held the heel of Esau first.
9. 6:9
   • Esau is the end of this world.
   • Jacob is the beginning of the world that follows.
10. 6:10
    • The hand of man is between the heel and the hand.
    • He told Esdras to ask no other question.
11. 6:11
    • Esdras answered and addressed the Lord who bears rule.
    • Esdras said this on condition that he had found favour in the Lord's sight.
12. 6:12
    • Esdras begged him to show his servant the end of his tokens.
    • He had shown Esdras part of those tokens the previous night.
13. 6:13
    • He answered and told Esdras to stand up on his feet.
    • He told Esdras he would hear a mighty sounding voice.
14. 6:14
    • There will be what seems a great motion.
    • The place where Esdras stands will not be moved.
15. 6:15
    • Esdras is not to be afraid when it speaks.
    • The word concerns the end.
    • The foundation of the earth is understood.
16. 6:16
    • The speech about these things trembles and is moved.
    • It knows that the end of these things must be changed.
    • Note: the Latin supplied for this verse is not text of the verse at all and cannot be compared with the English.
17. 6:17
    • When Esdras had heard it, he stood up on his feet.
    • Esdras hearkened.
    • There was a voice that spoke.
    • The sound of the voice was like the sound of many waters.
18. 6:18
    • The voice said that the days are coming.
    • In those days he will begin to draw near.
    • He will visit those who dwell upon the earth.
19. 6:19
    • He will begin to make inquisition of those who have hurt unjustly by their unrighteousness.
    • This will be when the affliction of Sion is fulfilled.
20. 6:20
    • The world will begin to vanish away.
    • When that world is finished, he will show these tokens.
    • The books will be opened before the firmament.
    • All will see them together.
21. 6:21
    • Children a year old will speak with their voices.
    • Women with child will bring forth untimely children of three or four months.
    • Those children will live.
    • Those children will leap about.
22. 6:22
    • The sown places will suddenly appear unsown.
    • The full storehouses will suddenly be found empty.
23. 6:23
    • The trumpet will give a sound.
    • When every man hears it, they will suddenly be afraid.
24. 6:24
    • At that time friends will fight one another like enemies.
    • The earth will stand in fear along with those who dwell in it.
    • The springs of the fountains will stand still.
    • For three hours they will not run.
25. 6:25
    • Whoever remains after all these things that he has told Esdras will escape.
    • That one will see his salvation.
    • That one will see the end of your world.
26. 6:26
    • The men who have been received will see it.
    • Those men have not tasted death since their birth.
    • The heart of the inhabitants will be changed.
    • Their heart will be turned into another mind.
27. 6:27
    • Evil will be put out.
    • Deceit will be quenched.
28. 6:28
    • Faith will flourish.
    • Corruption will be overcome.
    • The truth will be declared.
    • That truth has been so long without fruit.
29. 6:29
    • While he talked with Esdras, Esdras looked little by little upon the one before whom he stood.
30. 6:30
    • He said he had come to show Esdras this.
    • It concerns the night that is to come.
31. 6:31
    • If Esdras will pray yet more and fast seven days again, he will tell Esdras greater things by day.
32. 6:32
    • Esdras's voice has been heard before the Most High.
    • The Mighty has seen Esdras's righteous dealing.
    • The Mighty has also seen Esdras's chastity.
    • Esdras has had that chastity ever since his youth.
33. 6:33
    • For that reason he was sent to show Esdras all these things.
    • He was sent to tell Esdras to be of good comfort.
    • He was sent to tell Esdras not to fear.
34. 6:34
    • Esdras is not to hasten concerning the times that are past by thinking vain things.
    • The purpose is that he may not hasten away from the latter times.
35. 6:35
    • After this Esdras wept again.
    • Esdras fasted seven days in the same manner.
    • He did so to fulfil the three weeks that had been told him.
36. 6:36
    • On the eighth night Esdras's heart was vexed within him again.
    • Esdras began to speak before the Most High.
37. 6:37
    • Esdras's spirit was greatly set on fire.
    • Esdras's soul was in distress.
38. 6:38
    • Esdras said that the Lord spoke from the beginning of the creation, on the first day.
    • The Lord said, Let heaven and earth be made.
    • The Lord's word was a perfect work.
39. 6:39
    • Then the spirit was hovering.
    • Darkness and silence were on every side.
    • The sound of man's voice was not yet formed.
40. 6:40
    • Then the Lord commanded a fair light to come out of his treasuries.
    • This was so that his work might appear.
41. 6:41
    • On the second day the Lord made the spirit of the firmament.
    • The Lord commanded it to part asunder and make a division between the waters.
    • One part of the waters was to go up.
    • The other part was to remain beneath.
42. 6:42
    • On the third day the Lord commanded the waters to be gathered into the seventh part of the earth.
    • The Lord dried up six parts.
    • The Lord kept those six parts.
    • The purpose was that some of them, planted by God and tilled, might serve him.
43. 6:43
    • As soon as the Lord's word went forth, the work was made.
44. 6:44
    • Immediately there was great and innumerable fruit.
    • There were many and varied pleasures for the taste.
    • There were flowers of unchangeable colour.
    • There were odours of wonderful smell.
    • This was done on the third day.
45. 6:45
    • On the fourth day the Lord commanded that the sun should shine.
    • The Lord commanded that the moon should give her light.
    • The Lord commanded that the stars should be in order.
46. 6:46
    • The Lord gave them a charge to do service to man.
    • Man was still to be made.
47. 6:47
    • On the fifth day the Lord spoke to the seventh part where the waters were gathered.
    • The Lord said it should bring forth living creatures, fowls and fishes.
    • So it came to pass.
48. 6:48
    • The water was dumb and without life.
    • At God's commandment the water brought forth living things.
    • The purpose was that all people might declare his wondrous works.
49. 6:49
    • Then the Lord preserved two living creatures.
    • The Lord called the one Enoch.
    • The Lord called the other Leviathan.
50. 6:50
    • The Lord separated the one from the other.
    • The seventh part, where the water was gathered, could not hold them both.
51. 6:51
    • The Lord gave Enoch one part, which was dried up on the third day.
    • Enoch was to dwell in that part.
    • In that part are a thousand hills.
52. 6:52
    • The Lord gave Leviathan the seventh part, the moist part.
    • The Lord has kept him to be devoured by whom he wills and when he wills.
53. 6:53
    • On the sixth day the Lord commanded the earth to bring forth before him beasts, cattle and creeping things.
54. 6:54
    • After these the Lord also made Adam.
    • The Lord made Adam lord of all his creatures.
    • All of us come from Adam.
    • The people whom the Lord has chosen also come from Adam.
55. 6:55
    • Esdras said all this before the Lord.
    • The Lord made the world for our sakes.
56. 6:56
    • The other people also come from Adam.
    • The Lord has said that they are nothing.
    • The Lord has said they are like spittle.
    • The Lord has likened their abundance to a drop falling from a vessel.
57. 6:57
    • These heathen have been reputed as nothing.
    • These heathen have begun to be lords over us.
    • These heathen have begun to devour us.
58. 6:58
    • We are the Lord's people.
    • The Lord has called us his firstborn.
    • The Lord has called us his only begotten.
    • The Lord has called us his fervent lover.
    • We are given into their hands.
59. 6:59
    • Esdras asked, if the world is made for our sakes, why we do not possess an inheritance with the world.
    • Esdras asked how long this would endure.

Words Worth Explaining

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

6:1

"He" is the angel who has been answering Esdras since chapter 4, named Uriel earlier in the book. From verse 6 the speaker talks as God himself ("they all were made through me alone"), and the text never marks the change, so readers have long disagreed whether the angel is quoting God or God has taken over the speech. "In the beginning" deliberately echoes the opening words of Genesis. KJV's "the borders of the world" renders a word other manuscripts give as portals or gates, the openings where the winds and weather were imagined to be stored.

6:2

In this book paradise is a real place with "foundations" like a building, made before the world and kept ready for the righteous, not a word for heaven in general.

6:3

KJV's "the moveable powers" is an attempt at a Latin phrase meaning the powers that produce earthquakes, the forces that make the ground move.

6:4

"The firmament" is the sky imagined as a solid dome stretched over the earth, so it can have measurements. "The chimneys in Sion were hot" comes from a Latin manuscript reading caminis, furnaces or chimneys; other manuscripts read scabellum, footstool, giving "before the footstool of Zion was set in place," Zion being pictured as the place beneath God's throne. Sion is Zion, the temple hill of Jerusalem.

6:5

To be "sealed" is to be stamped with a mark of ownership, the way a document or a jar of wine was sealed; the image is of people marked out as God's before the world existed. "Gathered faith for a treasure" pictures faith piled up the way money is stored.

6:7

The book divides all of history into two ages, the present one and the one that follows it. Where the King James says "world" it is usually translating a word that means age or era, as in verses 9, 25 and 34.

6:8

The reference is to Genesis 25:24 to 26: Esau was born first, and Jacob came out gripping his brother's heel. "Born of him" means born to Isaac.

6:9

Esau stands for the present age and Jacob for the age that follows. The point of the birth story is that the two came out one immediately after the other, with nothing in between.

6:10

The King James line "The hand of man is betwixt the heel and the hand" is garbled; the Latin reads that the beginning of a man is his hand and the end of him is his heel, so hand and heel mark start and finish. The angel is forbidding any question about a gap between the two ages. "Esdras" is the Latin and Greek form of the name Ezra.

6:11

"O Lord that bearest rule" is a form of address meaning sovereign Lord, master of everything. "If I have found favour in thy sight" is the standard polite formula for asking a superior for something.

6:12

"Tokens" in the King James means signs or portents, events that point to something coming, not keepsakes.

6:14

Verses 14 to 16 differ between manuscripts. The King James has the ground under Esdras staying still; the Latin others follow has the foundations of the earth themselves hearing, understanding and shaking, because they know their end is coming.

6:15

A foundation is the strong base under a building. It holds everything up.

6:17

"The sound of many waters" is a stock comparison for an overwhelming roar, the noise of a river in flood or of surf, used elsewhere for the voice of God.

6:18

To "visit" someone, in older English, is to come to them in order to inspect and then act, whether to rescue or to punish. It is not a social call.

6:19

"Make inquisition" means conduct a formal investigation, the way a court examines a case. "The affliction of Sion" is the suffering of Jerusalem; the book presents itself as spoken thirty years after Babylon destroyed the city and its temple.

6:20

"The books" are the record books kept in heaven, ledgers of what each person has done. They are opened "before the firmament," in front of the dome of the sky, so that everyone can read them at once.

6:21

These are signs in the form of reversals of the natural order: infants too young to talk speaking, and babies born months early surviving. Where the King James has "and be raised up," the Latin verb is read by others as "dance."

6:22

A storehouse was a big building where food and grain were kept safe for later.

6:23

The trumpet here is the signal horn used to muster an army or announce a public event, not an instrument played for pleasure.

6:24

Ancient people counted twelve hours of daylight, from sunrise to sunset. Three hours is about a quarter of the day.

6:26

"The men that are received" are those taken up out of the world alive without dying, such as Enoch in Genesis 5:24 and Elijah in 2 Kings 2:11. "Turned into another meaning" is the King James wrestling with a phrase meaning changed into a different spirit or frame of mind.

6:28

Fruit here means results. To be "without fruit" is to produce nothing, like a tree that never grows any apples.

6:29

The manuscripts split here. The Latin usually reads that the place where Esdras stood rocked back and forth little by little; the King James translators took the verb as Esdras looking at the one standing in front of him.

6:31

Seven days of fasting is the standard preparation for a vision in this book, and the whole work is built as a series of these fasts followed by revelations.

6:32

"Chastity" in the King James covers purity of life in general, self discipline and integrity, not only sexual continence.

6:34

This line is obscure in every surviving text. The sense is roughly: do not be impatient about the ages that have already gone, so that you are not left rushing through the last ones.

6:35

"The three weeks" counts this fast together with the earlier seven day fasts in the book, making three complete periods of mourning and fasting.

6:38

From here to verse 54 Esdras retells the six days of creation in Genesis 1, adding details that came from later Jewish tradition rather than from Genesis itself.

6:39

"The spirit" is the wind or breath moving over the waters in Genesis 1:2. The same word in Hebrew, Greek and Latin covers wind, breath and spirit, and the ambiguity is in the original.

6:40

"Treasures" in the King James means storehouses or treasuries, rooms where things are kept in reserve until they are needed. Light is pictured as stored there before it was let out.

6:41

The "firmament" is again the solid dome of the sky, which in Genesis 1:6 to 7 holds back an upper body of water and separates it from the sea below.

6:42

Genesis gives no proportions for sea and dry land. The idea that the water was gathered into one seventh of the earth and six sevenths left dry is a tradition from outside Genesis, and it matters later in the chapter when the two great creatures are divided between the wet part and the dry.

6:44

"Divers" means various or of many kinds. "Flowers of unchangeable colour" means blossoms whose color never faded.

6:45

The stars keeping their order means moving in their fixed patterns, the same way night after night.

6:47

The seventh part means the sea, the watery piece of the world.

6:48

"Dumb" in the King James means unable to speak, with no suggestion of stupidity. The wonder is that water, which is mute and lifeless, produced living things.

6:49

"Enoch" here is a scribal corruption. The creature meant is Behemoth, the huge land beast described in Job 40:15 to 24, whose name was miscopied in the Latin. Leviathan is the matching sea monster of Job 41. In Jewish tradition the two were a pair, one ruling the dry land and one the deep.

6:51

"A thousand hills" echoes Psalm 50:10, where the cattle on a thousand hills belong to God; it is a way of saying a vast expanse of pasture land.

6:52

"To be devoured of whom thou wilt" means to be eaten by whomever God chooses. It draws on the tradition that these two monsters were being kept alive to be served as food at the feast at the end of the age.

6:53

"Creeping things" is the Genesis 1 category for small animals that move along the ground, including reptiles and insects.

6:54

"Of him come we all" makes Adam the ancestor of everyone; "the people also whom thou hast chosen" is Israel, singled out from that common descent.

6:56

"Spittle" is spit. The comparison to "a drop that falleth from a vessel" echoes Isaiah 40:15, where the nations are a drop from a bucket and dust on the scales.

6:57

"Heathen" is the King James word for the nations, that is, peoples other than Israel. It carries no comment on what they believe. In the story these are the Babylonians who hold Jerusalem's people captive.

6:58

"Firstborn" and "only begotten" are titles used for Israel as a nation, as in Exodus 4:22 where Israel is called God's firstborn son. "Thy fervent lover" renders a Latin phrase that can mean the one who loves you passionately or, on another reading, the one you love most.

6:59

"Inheritance" is land language: the permanent share of territory a family or tribe holds and passes on. The complaint is that the people who supposedly own the world have no portion of it.