2 Esdras 9:17-19

Common English Bible

¹⁷ He answered me: “As the field is, so is the seed; and as the flowers, so also the colors; as the labor, so also the product;^[a] and as the farmer, so the threshing floor. ¹⁸ There was a time in this world—when I was preparing for those who now are, before the world in which they would dwell was made for them—no one opposed me, because no one existed yet. ¹⁹ Now, however, those who have been created in this world—a world furnished with both an inexhaustible table and an endless pasture^[b]—have become corrupt in their habits.