Common English Bible

2 Esdras 7:117-124 Common English Bible (CEB)

117. What does it benefit everyone to live in sadness during the present time, and when dead to expect punishment?

118. Adam, what have you done?! If you sinned, the downfall wasn’t yours alone but also ours who are descended from you.

119. What benefit is it to us that we are promised an immortal time, but we have done works that bring death?

120. What good is it to us that everlasting hope has been predicted for us, but we have utterly failed?

121. What good is it that safe and healthy dwelling places are reserved, but we have behaved badly?

122. What good is it that the glory of the Most High will protect those who have conducted themselves decently, but we have conducted ourselves indecently?

123. What good is it that paradise will be revealed, whose fruit remains uncorrupted, in which there is plenty and healing,

124. but we won’t enter it, for we have visited unseemly places?