5. If anyone wants to go to the sea to see it or to rule over it, how can he come into the broad place unless he passes through the narrow?
6. Another instance: A city is built and positioned on a broad plain, full of all good things.
7. Its entrance, however, is narrow and located on a precipice so that there is fire on the right and deep water on the left.
8. There is a single path located between them, between the fire and the water, and the path has only room for human footprints.
9. If that city is given to someone as an inheritance, if the heir doesn’t pass through the danger, how will the heir receive the inheritance?"
10. I said, "Indeed, Lord."He said to me: "So also is Israel’s portion. I indeed made the world on account of them.
11. When Adam transgressed my ordinances, what had been made was judged,
12. and the entrances of this world were made narrow, sorrowful, and troublesome. They are few and bad, full of dangers and involving people in great hardships.
13. The entrances of the greater world, however, are spacious and secure, and they generate the fruit of immortality.
14. If those who live don’t enter these narrow and empty places, they can’t receive the things that are in store.
15. Therefore, why are you disturbed, being corruptible, and why are you upset, being mortal?
16. Why haven’t you focused your mind on what is still to come, rather than on what is present?"
17. I answered: "Supreme Lord, you ordained in your Law that the just will inherit these things, but the impious will perish.
18. The just then can tolerate the narrow, hoping for the spacious, but those who have acted impiously endure the narrow and won’t see the spacious."
19. He said to me: “You aren’t a higher judge than God, nor more intelligent than the Most High.
20. Better that many of those now alive should perish than that the Law of God, which is laid out before them, be disregarded.
21. God commanded those who come into the world, after they came, what they needed to do to live, and what laws they should observe to avoid punishment.
22. But they weren’t persuaded and opposed him. They filled their heads with worthless thoughts,