1. In the thirtieth year after our city was destroyed, I, Salathiel, who am also Ezra, was in Babylon. I was disturbed as I lay on my bed, and my thoughts kept welling up inside me,
2. because I saw how Zion lay in ruins and how those who lived in Babylon enjoyed abundance.
3. I was deeply disturbed, and I began to speak reverently to the Most High:
4. “Supreme Lord, didn’t you speak in the beginning, when you fashioned the earth, and did this alone? Didn’t you command the earth,
5. and it gave you Adam, a lifeless body? But it was the work of your hands, and so you breathed into him the breath of life, and he came to life in your presence.
6. You led him into paradise, which your strong hand had planted before earth came to be.
7. You gave him one command, and he disobeyed it, and so you immediately appointed death for him and for his descendants. Nations, tribes, peoples, and families without number were born from him.
8. Each nation lived by its own will, and people acted without giving you a thought. They acted with scorn, and you didn’t prevent them.
9. But again, in time you brought the flood over the world and upon those who live in it and destroyed them.
10. Their fate was all the same: as death came upon Adam so the flood came upon them.