2 Esdras 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The angel returns to Esdras and gives him two pictures, a sea that can only be reached through a narrow entrance and a city on a broad field reached by one small path between fire and deep water, and says Israel's portion is like this. He then describes what is coming: the bride appearing, the son Jesus revealed with those who are with him, four hundred years of rejoicing, the death of the son and of all who live, seven days of silence, the raising of the dead, and the Most High on the seat of judgment. Esdras lists righteous people who prayed for others and asks why that should not happen now; the angel answers that the day of judgment ends this time, and that no one will then be able to save the one who is destroyed. Esdras says it would have been better if the earth had not been given to Adam, and the angel calls this the battle each person born on earth must fight; Esdras closes by naming the mercies for which the Most High is called merciful.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Esdras finished speaking the preceding words.
   • The angel was sent to Esdras.
   • This angel was the same one that had been sent to him on the previous nights.
2. 7:2
   • The angel told Esdras to get up.
   • The angel told Esdras to hear the words he had come to tell him.
3. 7:3
   • Esdras said, Speak on, my God.
   • The angel said the sea is set in a wide place.
   • The angel said the sea is set in a wide place so that it might be deep and great.
4. 7:4
   • The angel proposed supposing that the entrance to the sea were narrow.
   • The angel proposed supposing that the entrance to the sea were like a river.
5. 7:5
   • The angel asked who could then go into the sea to look upon it and to rule it.
   • The angel said that if a man did not pass through the narrow entrance he could not come into the broad sea.
6. 7:6
   • The angel said there is another matter.
   • A city is built.
   • The city is set upon a broad field.
   • The city is full of all good things.
7. 7:7
   • The entrance of the city is narrow.
   • The entrance of the city is set in a place where one is in danger of falling.
   • On the right hand of the entrance there is as it were fire.
   • On the left hand of the entrance there is as it were deep water.
8. 7:8
   • There is only one path between the fire and the water.
   • The path is so narrow that only one man can go on it at a time.
9. 7:9
   • The angel posed the case of this city being given to a man as an inheritance.
   • The angel asked how the man could receive the inheritance if he never passes through the danger set before the city.
10. 7:10
    • Esdras said, It is so, Lord.
    • The angel said that Israel's portion is likewise.
11. 7:11
    • God made the world for the sake of Israel.
    • Adam transgressed God's statutes.
    • What is now done was decreed when Adam transgressed.
12. 7:12
    • The entrances of this world were then made narrow.
    • The entrances of this world are full of sorrow and toil.
    • The entrances of this world are few.
    • The entrances of this world are evil.
    • The entrances of this world are full of perils.
    • The entrances of this world are very painful.
13. 7:13
    • The entrances of the earlier and greater world were wide.
    • The entrances of the earlier and greater world were safe.
    • The entrances of the earlier and greater world brought forth fruit that does not die.
14. 7:14
    • If the living do not labour to pass through these narrow and futile things, they can never receive what is laid up for them.
15. 7:15
    • The angel asked Esdras why he disturbs himself, since he is a corruptible man.
    • The angel asked Esdras why he is agitated, since he is mortal.
16. 7:16
    • The angel asked Esdras why he has not considered in his mind the thing that is to come rather than the thing that is present.
17. 7:17
    • Esdras answered.
    • Esdras addressed the Lord as the one who bears rule.
    • Esdras said God has ordained in his law that the righteous shall inherit these things.
    • Esdras said God has ordained in his law that the ungodly shall perish.
18. 7:18
    • The righteous shall endure narrow things.
    • The righteous hope for wide things.
    • Those who have done wickedly have endured the narrow things.
    • Those who have done wickedly shall not see the wide things.
19. 7:19
    • The angel said there is no judge above God.
    • The angel said there is none that has understanding above the Most High.
20. 7:20
    • Many perish in this present life.
    • They perish because they despise the law of God that is set before them.
21. 7:21
    • God gave strict commandment to those who came into the world.
    • The commandment told them what they should do in order to live.
    • The commandment told them what they should observe in order to avoid punishment.
22. 7:22
    • They were not obedient to God.
    • They spoke against God.
    • They imagined vain things.
23. 7:23
    • They deceived themselves by their wicked deeds.
    • They said of the Most High that he does not exist.
    • They did not know his ways.
24. 7:24
    • They despised his law.
    • They denied his covenants.
    • They were not faithful in his statutes.
    • They did not perform his works.
25. 7:25
    • The angel addressed Esdras.
    • Empty things are for the empty.
    • Full things are for the full.
26. 7:26
    • The time shall come when the signs the angel has told Esdras will come to pass.
    • The bride shall appear.
    • The bride shall come forth and be seen.
    • The bride is at present withdrawn from the earth.
27. 7:27
    • Whoever is delivered from the evils spoken of shall see God's wonders.
28. 7:28
    • God's son Jesus shall be revealed together with those who are with him.
    • Those who remain shall rejoice for four hundred years.
29. 7:29
    • After those years God's son Christ shall die.
    • All men that have breath shall die.
30. 7:30
    • The world shall be turned into the ancient silence for seven days.
    • This will be as it was in the former judgments.
    • No man shall remain.
31. 7:31
    • After seven days the world that is not yet awake shall be raised up.
    • What is corrupt shall die.
32. 7:32
    • The earth shall give back those who sleep in her.
    • The dust shall give back those who dwell in silence.
    • The secret places shall deliver up the souls entrusted to them.
33. 7:33
    • The Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment.
    • Misery shall pass away.
    • Longsuffering shall come to an end.
34. 7:34
    • Judgment alone shall remain.
    • Truth shall stand.
    • Faith shall grow strong.
35. 7:35
    • Work shall follow after.
    • The reward shall be shown.
    • Good deeds shall have force.
    • Wicked deeds shall have no rule.
36. 7:36
    • Esdras said Abraham prayed first for the Sodomites.
    • Esdras said Moses prayed for the fathers who sinned in the wilderness.
37. 7:37
    • Esdras said Jesus prayed after Moses for Israel in the days of Achan.
38. 7:38
    • Esdras said Samuel and David prayed concerning the destruction.
    • Esdras said Solomon prayed for those who should come to the sanctuary.
39. 7:39
    • Esdras said Helias prayed for those who received rain.
    • Esdras said Helias prayed for the dead, that he might live.
40. 7:40
    • Esdras said Ezechias prayed for the people in the time of Sennacherib.
    • Esdras said many prayed for many.
41. 7:41
    • Corruption has now grown up.
    • Wickedness has increased.
    • The righteous have prayed for the ungodly.
    • Esdras asked why intercession should not happen now also.
42. 7:42
    • The angel answered Esdras.
    • The present life is not the end in which much glory abides.
    • Because of this the righteous prayed for the weak.
43. 7:43
    • The day of doom shall be the end of this present time.
    • The day of doom shall be the beginning of the immortality to come.
    • In that immortality corruption has passed away.
44. 7:44
    • Intemperance is at an end.
    • Unbelief is cut off.
    • Righteousness has grown.
    • Truth has sprung up.
45. 7:45
    • Then no man shall be able to save the one who is destroyed.
    • Then no man shall be able to oppress the one who has gained the victory.
46. 7:46
    • Esdras answered and said.
    • Esdras said this is his first and last word.
    • Esdras said it would have been better not to have given the earth to Adam.
    • Esdras said that, the earth having been given him, it would have been better to have restrained him from sinning.
47. 7:47
    • Esdras asked what profit it is for men in this present time to live in sorrow.
    • Esdras asked what profit it is to expect punishment after death.
48. 7:48
    • Esdras addressed Adam and asked what he had done.
    • Adam was the one who sinned.
    • Adam did not fall alone.
    • All who come from Adam fell with him.
49. 7:49
    • Esdras asked what profit it is to us that an immortal time is promised to us.
    • We have done works that bring death.
50. 7:50
    • An everlasting hope is promised to us.
    • We ourselves, being most wicked, have been made worthless.
51. 7:51
    • Dwellings of health and safety are laid up for us.
    • We have lived wickedly.
52. 7:52
    • The glory of the Most High is kept to defend those who have led a careful life.
    • We have walked in the most wicked ways of all.
53. 7:53
    • A paradise is to be shown whose fruit endures forever.
    • In that paradise there is security.
    • In that paradise there is healing.
    • We shall not enter into that paradise.
54. 7:54
    • We have walked in unpleasant places.
55. 7:55
    • The faces of those who have practised abstinence shall shine brighter than the stars.
    • Our faces shall be blacker than darkness.
56. 7:56
    • While we lived we committed iniquity.
    • We did not consider that after death we would begin to suffer for it.
57. 7:57
    • The angel answered Esdras.
    • This is the nature of the contest that a man born on the earth must fight.
58. 7:58
    • If a man is overcome he shall suffer what Esdras has said.
    • If a man gains the victory he shall receive what the angel says.
59. 7:59
    • This is the life of which Moses spoke to the people while he lived.
    • Moses said, Choose life for yourself, that you may live.
60. 7:60
    • They did not believe Moses.
    • They did not believe the prophets who came after him.
    • They did not believe the speaker himself, who has spoken to them.
61. 7:61
    • There shall not be such sorrow over their destruction as there shall be joy over those who are persuaded to salvation.
62. 7:62
    • Esdras answered and said.
    • Esdras said he knows that the Most High is called merciful.
    • He is merciful in that he has mercy on those who have not yet come into the world.
63. 7:63
    • He has mercy on those who turn to his law.
64. 7:64
    • He is patient.
    • He bears long with those who have sinned, since they are his creatures.
65. 7:65
    • He is bountiful.
    • He is ready to give where there is need.
66. 7:66
    • He is of great mercy.
    • He multiplies mercies more and more to those who are present.
    • He multiplies mercies to those who are past.
    • He multiplies mercies to those who are to come.
67. 7:67
    • If he did not multiply his mercies, the world would not continue with those who inherit in it.
68. 7:68
    • He pardons.
    • If he did not out of his goodness relieve those who have committed iniquities of them, the ten thousandth part of men would not remain alive.
69. 7:69
    • He is judge.
    • If as judge he did not forgive those who are healed by his word, and did not blot out the multitude of contentions, the outcome would be as follows.
70. 7:70
    • There would perhaps be very few left out of an innumerable multitude.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

Esdras is the Latin and Greek form of the name Ezra. The angel speaking here is Uriel, named earlier in the book, who has been answering Esdras across a series of night visions.

7:2

Esdras is another way of saying Ezra. He was a teacher of God's people long ago.

7:3

Instead of answering straight out, the angel tells a riddle picture. He explains what it means in verse 10.

7:5

To rule the sea meant to sail on it and use it.

7:9

The King James says the city is given "for an inheritance." An inheritance was land or property handed down inside a family, so it was yours for good.

7:10

A portion is a share handed out, and in particular the piece of land assigned to each family or tribe when Canaan was divided up. Israel's portion is the inheritance promised to them, which in this parable can only be reached through the narrow entrance.

7:11

The reference is to Genesis 3, where Adam breaks the one command given to him. In this book that act is the point at which the present condition of the world was settled.

7:13

The older world means the world as it stood before Adam's disobedience, when, as this book pictures it, the ways into life were broad and safe.

7:14

"Strait" in the King James means narrow or cramped. It is a different word from "straight" and has nothing to do with straightness. The same word lies behind "strait things" in verse 18.

7:15

"Corruptible" means perishable, liable to rot and die. Through most of this chapter corruption and corruptible describe decay and mortality rather than moral rot.

7:17

Righteous people are those who do what is right. The ungodly are those who live as if God did not matter. "Your law" means the law God gave through Moses.

7:18

In the King James, "strait" means narrow and tight. It is a different word from "straight," though they sound the same.

7:19

"The Highest" and "the Most High" are titles for God. They mean the one above everyone and everything else.

7:21

"Strait commandment" uses the word in a second sense: strict, tightly binding. It is not the narrowness of verses 12 and 14.

7:24

A covenant is a solemn agreement between God and his people, with promises on both sides. Breaking it was serious, like breaking a sworn deal.

7:25

A saying built like a balance: emptiness is what the empty receive, fullness is what the full receive. Each gets what matches what he is.

7:26

The bride is the heavenly Jerusalem, pictured as a woman kept out of sight until she is brought forward. Some Latin manuscripts read "the city" here instead of "the bride"; the two are the same image.

7:28

"Jesus" is the Greek and Latin spelling of the Hebrew name Joshua. Early versions of this book in other languages read "my Messiah" rather than a personal name at this point, and the Latin copies behind the King James were made by Christian scribes. The four hundred years is the length of this deliverer's kingdom on earth before the end; manuscripts of the book disagree on the figure, some reading thirty years and some a thousand.

7:29

"Christ" is not a surname. It is the Greek word for "anointed," the same idea as the Hebrew word messiah: someone marked out for office by having oil poured on him, as kings and priests were.

7:30

The old silence is the stillness that existed before the world was made. The seven days of it answer to the seven days of creation in Genesis 1.

7:31

The picture is of the world itself asleep through those seven days and then woken again, with everything perishable dying off as it wakes.

7:32

The hidden places are the storerooms where, in this book, the souls of the dead are held between death and the judgment.

7:33

"Long suffering" is one word in the King James, meaning patient restraint, holding back from punishing. It does not mean suffering that goes on a long time. The "seat of judgment" is a judge's bench, the raised chair from which a verdict was delivered.

7:35

"The work shall follow" means that each person's deeds come after him into the judgment, like witnesses. A textual matter also falls here: between this verse and the next, the King James is missing a long passage of about seventy verses on the judgment, the state of souls after death, and whether the righteous can pray for the wicked once the end has come. A page had been cut from the one Latin manuscript from which the western copies descend, and the missing part was not recovered until a complete manuscript was found in 1875. Modern editions therefore number the next verse 7:102, not 7:36.

7:36

Abraham bargained with God over Sodom in Genesis 18, asking that the city be spared for the sake of a few righteous people inside it. Moses pleaded for Israel after the golden calf in Exodus 32, and again after the report of the spies in Numbers 14.

7:37

"Jesus" here is Joshua son of Nun, Moses' successor. Greek and Latin use one name for both men, and the King James has simply carried the Latin spelling across. Achan is the soldier whose theft of plunder from Jericho brought defeat on Israel; Joshua's prayer over it is in Joshua 7.

7:38

Samuel prayed for Israel when the Philistines attacked, in 1 Samuel 7, and David prayed when a plague fell on the people after his census, in 2 Samuel 24; "the destruction" covers both. Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple that God would hear anyone who later came there to pray, in 1 Kings 8.

7:39

Helias is the Latin form of Elijah. He prayed for rain to end a three year drought in 1 Kings 18, and he prayed over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath, who then revived, in 1 Kings 17.

7:40

Ezechias is the Latin form of Hezekiah, king of Judah. Sennacherib was the Assyrian king whose army surrounded Jerusalem in Hezekiah's reign; the king's prayer is in 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37.

7:41

Rot means going bad, the way old fruit does. Here it is used about people going bad.

7:42

The sense is that the present age is not the final state where glory stays, and that praying for the weak belongs to this age and not to what follows it.

7:43

"Doom" in older English means a judgment or a sentence handed down, not disaster. The day of doom is the day the verdict is given.

7:53

"Paradise" comes from an old Persian word for a walled garden or hunting park. In this book it is a place, the garden planted at the beginning and kept in reserve.

7:55

People who "used abstinence" chose to go without food, drink, or comforts on purpose, usually as part of serving God.

7:57

The terms of a battle are the rules for how it is fought and how you win.

7:59

The quotation is from Deuteronomy 30:19, where Moses sets life and death in front of the people and tells them to choose life.

7:60

A prophet is someone who told people what God said.

7:61

The Latin of this verse is tangled and its sense is disputed. It appears to mean that the grief over those who are destroyed will be outweighed by the joy over those who are brought to salvation.

7:62

Mercy on those who have not yet come into the world means mercy reaching people who do not yet exist, the generations still unborn.

7:64

Creatures means every living thing God made, people too.

7:68

"The ten thousandth part" is not a calculation. It was a standard ancient way of saying "only the tiniest fraction."

7:69

"Contentions" are quarrels or legal charges. The image is of a judge striking a mass of cases off the list rather than trying them one by one.