2 Esdras 5:45-47

Common English Bible

⁴⁵ I said: “How then could you say to your servant that you will certainly give life to the creation created by you at one time? If, therefore, they will live at one time^[a] and the creation will sustain them then, couldn’t it sustain them at one time now?”

⁴⁶ He said to me: “Ask a woman’s womb: If you bear ten children,^[b] why do you only do it over time? Ask it then to produce ten at once.”

⁴⁷ I said, “Surely it can’t, but only over time.”