Common English Bible

2 Esdras 14:13-23 Common English Bible (CEB)

13. Now then put your house in order; give solemn instruction to your people. Console the humble among them, and instruct those who are wise. Renounce now this corruptible life,

14. put away short-lived thoughts, cast off from yourself human burdens, strip off your weak nature, push aside the thoughts that most trouble you, and hasten to depart from these times.

15. As for the evils that you have now seen happen, people will yet do worse than these.

16. The weaker the world becomes because of old age, the more will evils multiply upon those who dwell in it.

17. Truth will depart and falsehood will come near. Even now the eagle, which you saw in your vision, hastens to come."

18. I answered: "I will speak in your presence, Lord!

19. Look, I will go as you commanded me and warn the people who are now living. But who will warn those who will be born in the future?

20. The world is in darkness. Those who live in it have no light,

21. because your Law has been burned, and so no one knows what things you have done or what works are about to come to pass.

22. If then I have found favor before you, send a holy spirit into me, and I will write everything that has happened in the world from the beginning, the things that were written in your Law, so that human beings can find the path, and those who want to live in the last days may live."

23. He replied to me: "Go, gather the people and say to them that they shouldn’t seek you for forty days.