2 Esdras 9:17-19

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

¹⁷ He answered me and said, ‘As is the field, so is the seed; and as are the flowers, so are the colours; and as is the work, so is the product; and as is the farmer, so is the threshing-floor. ¹⁸ For there was a time in this age when I was preparing for those who now exist, before the world was made for them to live in, and no one opposed me then, for no one existed; ¹⁹ but now those who have been created in this world, which is supplied both with an unfailing table and an inexhaustible pasture,^[a] have become corrupt in their ways.