2 Esdras 9: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The one who answers explains how to recognize the time when the Most High will begin to visit the world, tells who will be kept safe and who will be in torment, and says to stop asking how the ungodly are punished and to ask instead how the righteous are saved. When the man says more perish than are saved, the answer speaks of a world corrupted and of one grape and one plant kept out of it. He is told to spend seven more days in a field of flowers, eating only flowers and praying, and he does so, then prays about the law sown in Israel that the fathers did not keep. He then sees a woman in mourning, who tells him she was childless for thirty years, was given a son, and made a feast when the boy grew up and reached the age to have a wife.

Claim by Claim

1. 9:1
   • A figure answered the speaker.
   • He told him to measure diligently within himself.
   • He spoke of a point at which part of the signs will be seen to have passed.
   • Those signs had been told to the speaker beforehand.
2. 9:2
   • At that point the speaker will understand that it is the very time spoken of.
   • In that time the Most High will begin to visit the world.
   • The Most High made the world.
3. 9:3
   • Shaking of places, that is earthquakes, will be seen in the world.
   • Uproar of the peoples will be seen in the world.
4. 9:4
   • Then the speaker will fully understand that the Most High spoke of those things.
   • The Most High spoke of them from the days that were before the speaker, from the beginning.
5. 9:5
   • Everything made in the world has a beginning.
   • Everything made in the world has an end.
   • The end is manifest.
6. 9:6
   • The times of the Most High likewise have plain beginnings.
   • Those beginnings appear in wonders and powerful works.
   • Their endings appear in effects and in signs.
7. 9:7
   • There is a class of people who will be saved.
   • They will be able to escape by their works.
   • They will be able to escape by faith.
   • The faith is the faith by which they have believed.
8. 9:8
   • Such a one will be preserved from the perils already spoken of.
   • Such a one will see God's salvation in his land.
   • Such a one will see it within his borders.
   • God has sanctified that land for himself from the beginning.
9. 9:9
   • Those who now abuse God's ways will then be in a wretched state.
   • Those who cast them away despitefully will dwell in torments.
10. 9:10
    • Some people received benefits during their life.
    • Those same people did not know God.
11. 9:11
    • Some people loathed God's law while they still had liberty.
    • A place of repentance was still open to them at that time.
    • They did not understand.
    • They despised the law.
12. 9:12
    • Those same people must come to know it after death, by pain.
13. 9:13
    • The speaker is told not to be curious about how the ungodly will be punished.
    • He is told not to be curious about when they will be punished.
    • He is told to enquire instead how the righteous will be saved.
    • He is told to enquire whose the world is.
    • He is told to enquire for whom the world was created.
14. 9:14
    • The speaker answered.
    • The speaker spoke.
15. 9:15
    • The speaker has said it before, says it now, and will say it again afterward.
    • More people perish than are saved.
16. 9:16
    • A wave is greater than a drop.
17. 9:17
    • He answered the speaker.
    • As the field is, so is the seed.
    • As the flowers are, such are the dyes or colours.
    • As the workman is, such is the work.
    • As the farmer is, so is his threshing floor.
    • It was the time of the world.
18. 9:18
    • God prepared the world before it was made.
    • He prepared it for those now living to dwell in.
    • No one spoke against him then.
19. 9:19
    • At that time everyone obeyed.
    • Those now created in this prepared world have a table that does not fail.
    • They have a law that cannot be searched out.
    • They are corrupted in their ways.
    • The King James wording of this clause, about a perpetual seed and an unsearchable law, is obscure.
20. 9:20
    • God considered the world.
    • There was peril in it.
    • The peril was because of the devices that had come into it.
21. 9:21
    • God saw it.
    • God spared them, but only barely.
    • God kept for himself a grape out of a cluster.
    • God kept for himself a plant out of a great people.
22. 9:22
    • Let the multitude perish.
    • That multitude was born in vain.
    • Let God's grape be kept.
    • Let God's plant be kept.
    • God made it perfect with great labour.
23. 9:23
    • The speaker is told to wait seven more days.
    • He is told not to fast during those days.
24. 9:24
    • He is told to go into a field of flowers.
    • No house is built in that field.
    • He is to eat only the flowers of the field.
    • He is to taste no flesh.
    • He is to drink no wine.
    • He is to eat flowers only.
25. 9:25
    • He is told to pray to the Highest continually.
    • Then God will come and talk with him.
26. 9:26
    • The speaker went into the field called Ardath.
    • He went as he had been commanded.
    • He sat there among the flowers.
    • He ate of the herbs of the field.
    • That food satisfied him.
27. 9:27
    • After seven days he lay upon the grass.
    • His heart was troubled within him again, as before.
28. 9:28
    • He opened his mouth.
    • He began to speak before the Most High.
    • He spoke.
29. 9:29
    • He addressed the Lord.
    • The Lord shows himself to us.
    • The Lord was shown to our fathers in the wilderness.
    • That place is one where no man treads.
    • That place is barren.
    • This happened when they came out of Egypt.
    • The Lord spoke at that time.
30. 9:30
    • God said: Hear me, O Israel.
    • God said: mark my words, seed of Jacob.
31. 9:31
    • God said he sows his law in them.
    • The law will bring forth fruit in them.
    • They will be honoured in it for ever.
32. 9:32
    • Our fathers received the law.
    • They did not keep it.
    • They did not observe God's ordinances.
    • The fruit of the law did not perish.
    • The fruit of the law could not perish.
    • It could not perish because it was God's.
33. 9:33
    • Those who received the law perished.
    • They perished because they did not keep what was sown in them.
34. 9:34
    • It is a custom that the ground receives seed.
    • It is a custom that the sea receives a ship.
    • It is a custom that a vessel receives meat or drink.
    • A time comes when destruction occurs.
    • The King James wording leaves it unclear whether what perishes is the container or what was put into it.
35. 9:35
    • That which was sown, or cast in, or received, perishes.
    • It does not remain with us.
    • With us it has not happened that way.
36. 9:36
    • We who have received the law perish by sin.
    • Our heart, which received the law, perishes also.
37. 9:37
    • The law does not perish.
    • The law remains in its own honour.
38. 9:38
    • The speaker spoke these things in his heart.
    • He looked back with his eyes.
    • He saw a woman on the right side.
    • She mourned and wept with a loud voice.
    • She was much grieved in heart.
    • Her clothes were torn.
    • She had ashes upon her head.
39. 9:39
    • He let go the thoughts he had been thinking.
    • He turned to her.
40. 9:40
    • He asked her why she was weeping.
    • He asked her why she was grieved in her mind.
41. 9:41
    • She addressed him as her lord and asked to be left alone.
    • She asked to bewail herself and add to her sorrow.
    • She said she was very bitter in mind.
    • She said she was brought very low.
42. 9:42
    • He asked her what ailed her.
    • He told her to tell him.
43. 9:43
    • She said she was his servant.
    • She said she had been barren.
    • She said she had borne no child.
    • She said she had a husband for thirty years.
44. 9:44
    • She said that for those thirty years she prayed to the Highest.
    • She said she did so every hour and every day.
    • She said she did so night and day.
45. 9:45
    • After thirty years God heard her, his handmaid.
    • God looked upon her low estate.
    • God considered her trouble.
    • God gave her a son.
    • She was very glad of him.
    • Her husband was glad also.
    • All her neighbours were glad.
    • They gave great honour to the Almighty.
46. 9:46
    • She nourished him with great labour.
47. 9:47
    • He grew up.
    • She came to the time of taking a wife for him.
    • She made a feast.

Words Worth Explaining

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

9:1

The speaker answering here is the angel Uriel, who has been sent to answer Ezra's questions since chapter 4. From verse 7 onward the speech slides into God's own voice ("my land," "my salvation," "I have sanctified"), which is normal in this book: the messenger's words and the words of the one who sent him are not kept apart.

9:2

"Visit" in 1611 English does not mean a friendly call. To visit a place or a people is to come and deal with them, whether to rescue or to punish. The King James "begin to visit the world" means begin to act on it, to settle accounts with it.

9:3

The Latin text of this verse is longer than what the King James translators printed, adding plans of nations, wavering of leaders and confusion of princes to the earthquakes and uproar. Other modern Bibles therefore give a fuller list here.

9:7

The Latin manuscripts differ at this point: some read "by his works and by faith," others "by his works or by faith." The difference matters to the sense, and the translations split accordingly.

9:8

"Salvation" here carries its plain older sense of rescue, being brought safely through the dangers just listed. "My land" and "my borders" mean the land of Israel, pictured as the place where that rescue will be seen.

9:9

"Torment" means terrible pain that goes on and on.

9:11

"Place of repentance" is a set phrase, originally a legal one, meaning an opportunity to change your mind while there is still time to act on it. It is not a location.

9:13

"Ungodly" means people who live as if God were not there. "Righteous" means people who do what is right and keep faith with God.

9:17

This string of sayings works like proverbs: each thing matches what produced it, so a crop answers to its field and a piece of work to its workman. The King James "husbandman" and "husbandry" mean farmer and farming. The last clause, "for it was the time of the world," is obscure in the Latin, and translators disagree about where the sentence ends and how it joins to the next verse.

9:19

This is one of the most damaged sentences in the book. The Latin is uncertain, and translators reconstruct it in very different ways: some speak of a table that never fails, others of an unending seed, and the "law which is unsearchable" is read by some as the cause of the corruption and by others as something the corrupt have escaped. The plain rendering follows the King James; other Bibles will look quite different here.

9:21

A single grape kept back from the whole cluster is a picture of a remnant, the tiny surviving few left when the mass is lost. The second image is uncertain in the manuscripts: some read "a plant out of a great forest," others "out of a great people."

9:23

To fast is to go without food on purpose, usually while praying. Ezra had fasted for seven days before each of his earlier visions. This time he is told not to.

9:24

Earlier in this book Ezra prepared for a vision by fasting seven days. Here he is told to do the opposite and eat, but only wild flowers and green plants, with no meat and no wine. Meat and wine were the food of feasting, so this is a restricted diet rather than a fast, and the empty field with no house in it keeps him away from ordinary human company.

9:26

"Ardath" is not a place known from anywhere else, and the manuscripts spell it differently (Ardat, Ardaf, Arphad), so the name cannot be located. Note also that in 1611 English "meat" means food of any kind, not flesh in particular, so the King James "the meat of the same" means simply that food; and "herbs" means green plants in general, not seasonings.

9:29

The wilderness after the exodus from Egypt is where Israel received the law at Sinai, which is what the next two verses quote. "A place where no man treadeth" and "a barren place" describe the desert as land nobody walks in and nothing grows on.

9:30

Jacob was the man renamed Israel, so "Israel" and "the seed of Jacob" in the same breath are two names for the same people, his descendants.

9:31

Sowing is scattering seed across a field so a crop will grow. God is saying his law will grow inside people the way a planted crop grows.

9:32

"Fruit" keeps the farming picture going. It means the good that the law produces in a person's life.

9:34

The argument is drawn from ordinary containers: ground holds seed, a ship holds its cargo on the sea, a jar holds food or drink. The point being made is that when the container is destroyed what it held is destroyed with it, but with Israel it went the other way round. The Latin here is tangled, and translations run it in opposite directions: some have the contents perishing while the containers survive. Either way the conclusion in verses 36 and 37 is the same, that the people who held the law perished while the law itself did not.

9:37

In 1611 English "his" was the ordinary possessive for "it" as well as for "he," so "remaineth in his force" means remains in its own force. Nothing personal is meant.

9:38

Tearing your clothes and putting ashes or dust on your head were the recognized public signs of grief in this world, as visible as a black armband. A person in torn clothes covered in ashes was announcing a death or a disaster, not simply feeling sad. This encounter begins a new vision that runs on into the next chapter.

9:41

"Brought very low" means she feels crushed and worn out by sadness.

9:43

In this society a wife with no children had no heir and no security in old age, and childlessness was taken as a public disgrace that she carried rather than her husband. Thirty years of it explains the extremity of her mourning.

9:45

The King James "handmaid" means a female servant. Calling yourself someone's servant or handmaid when speaking to a superior, or to God, was the polite form of address, not a statement about employment.

9:46

"Travail" in the King James means hard toil or painful effort, the same word used for the pains of childbirth. She means raising him cost her a great deal.

9:47

Marriages were arranged by the parents, so "came to the time that he should have a wife" means he had reached the age at which his mother would find him one. The feast is the wedding celebration, which the family of the groom hosted and which could run for days.