2 Esdras 4:11-13

Common English Bible

¹¹ How then can your mind^[a] contain the way of the Most High? How can a person who is already corrupted by the corrupt world understand the realm beyond corruption?”

I fell on my face ¹² and said to him, “It would have been better not to have come into being than to come here, live in the middle of wickedness, suffer, and not understand why.”

¹³ He answered me: “I went forth to a forest of trees on the plain,^[b] and they devised a plan