2 Esdras
This book is sometimes called the Apocalypse of Ezra because of its prophesies of the end of time. Chapters 1 and 2 appear to be an independent work added to the main text at a later date. The authors are unknown.
1. The author, writing in the first person as Esdras (Ezra), says that God came to him and told him to rebuke His people for their wickedness, that they have forgotten Him, and have made offerings to ‘strange gods’. That should really be ‘stranger gods’. God lists his acts of kindness to the Israelites, saying He parted the sea, sent them Moses, sent them quail and gave them tents. Even things that they make themselves are attributed to the supernatural. God says to Esdras that because the people have turned away from Him, that He will make their children barren. Note: two thousand years later this has not eventuated.
2. God reminds Esdras what He did to the (fictional) cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God tells Esdras to ‘do right by the widow, give to the poor, defend the orphan, (and) clothe the naked’. Esdras then (prematurely) prophesies the end of the world. He has a vision of people praising God on Mount Sion, and a tall young man putting crowns on people’s heads. He asks an angel ‘What are these?’ The angel answers that these are people that have died and have ‘confessed the name of God’ and that the man that crowns them is the ‘Son of God’.
3. Esdras paraphrases the Old Testament from Adam to his own time then asks God why He has destroyed His people, preserved their enemies, spared the wicked, why their ‘reward appeareth not’, why ‘their labors hath no fruit’ and why the heathens ‘flow with wealth?’
4. An angel by the name of Uriel appears to Esdras to answer his questions. The angel tells Esdras that he cannot comprehend ‘the way of the most high’. As always, neither God nor angels have any more knowledge than the people they ‘speak through’. Uriel then goes on to prove his point by asking Esdras questions such as ‘What is the weight of fire?’ and then tells him that if he can’t answer earthly things such as this, how can he comprehend the things of heaven? This kind of idiocy leads to the false and dangerous point of view that unquestioning faith is a virtue. Esdras continues, insisting on answers. Uriel replies that the destruction of evildoers is yet to come. Esdras asks if the end of time will come within his lifetime. Uriel replies (with a straight answer for once) that he doesn’t know.
5-6. Uriel says that the end days are coming (but he doesn’t know when), that people will be ‘taken in great number’, the sun will shine in the night, the moon will be seen three times in one day, blood will come from wood, the sea will ‘cast out fish’, and that ‘menstrous women will bring forth monsters’. Uriel tells Esdras that if he continues to pray another seven days (he had already fasted for seven days at this point) that he will see more visions. After three weeks of fasting Esdras retells the biblical story of creation, then likens heathens to ‘spittle’ and complains that heathens ‘lord over us’ and ‘devour us’. He asks God how long this will endure.
7. Uriel appears again and makes a series of statements regarding narrow paths leading to wide paths, which could mean that the Israelites have to experience bad things so that when the good things arrive they will appreciate them, but this is unclear. Uriel says that God made the world for the Israelites (just one favored race), and asks Esdras to consider what is to come, not what is present. Then Uriel refers to ‘my son Jesus’ and ‘after these years (four hundred) shall my son Christ die, and all men that have life’, and at that time ‘no man shall remain’ and ‘the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her’ (the dead will rise out of their graves), and ‘misery shall pass away’. (This is a dishonest translation. See the commentary below). Uriel says that the end time will be a ‘day of doom’ and the beginning of immortality. Esdras says to Uriel that it would have been better if the earth had never been given to Adam.
8-9. Uriel says that God ‘hath made this world for many, but the world to come for few’. An analogy is drawn between a child in the womb and our life on earth, and then delivery of the child and delivery (or ‘disposal’) of our lives according to God’s will. An analogy is drawn between seed that is planted but does not come up and people who are born but do not come up (to God). God says that he has prepared thirst and pain for non-believers. God tells Esdras (after his three weeks of fasting) to go to a field and eat only of its flowers for one more week. Esdras obeys. He sees a woman in the field crying. She tells Esdras that she was barren but prayed to God ‘every hour for thirty years’ and God gave her a son.
10. The woman tells Esdras that her son died on his wedding night and that she has come to the field to ‘neither eat nor drink (but) fast until I die’. Esdras chastises her for grieving over her son when Jerusalem is laid waste and its inhabitants ‘delivered into the hands of those that hate us’. Then the earth shakes and the woman is replaced by a vision of a city. Uriel makes an analogy between the woman who was barren for thirty years and the time that lapsed before Solomon rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem.
11-12. Esdras has a vision of a three-headed eagle ruling over the world, and a lion that condemns the eagle for its wickedness and vanity. Uriel tells Esdras that this is a vision of the ‘last times’. He tells Esdras to go and teach these things after another seven days in the field eating flowers (in case God has more things to show him).
13-14. After these seven days Esdras has a dream of a man from the sea who breathes words of fire and a multitude that rise up to defeat him but are burned to death. This is apparently a vision of God defeating the enemies of the Jews. God tells Esdras to stay in the field three more days. On the third day, Esdras hears a voice coming from a bush (as you would after fasting and eating nothing but flowers for 38 days!). The voice is God’s. God tells Esdras that He will ‘light a candle of understanding in thine heart’ and that he must write God’s words with the help of five scribes. Over the next forty days they (claim to) write 240 books. God commands that only the first of these books be made public.
15. God says to Esdras, regarding the books, ‘let not the incredulity of them trouble thee’. At last a real Bible prophesy: Christians have been dutifully ignoring incredulity ever since. God says that ‘the unfaithful shall die in their unfaithfullness’. God says that He will bring plagues, the sword, famine, death and destruction’. God continues to thunder about His people’s ‘whoredom’ that is, their unfaithfulness. God says that destruction is at hand for Babylon, Asia, Egypt and Syria, and that ‘there shall be no man left to till the earth’ and ‘all places shall be desolate of men’. Another failed prophesy.
Esdras’ conversations with God are an internal dialogue with the father figure of his imagination, and his visions are an objectification of his inner reality. In Chapter 7 Uriel refers to ‘my son Jesus’, and ‘after (four hundred) years … my son Christ (will) die’. What looks like a stunning prophesy, however, is the result of an opportunistic and dishonest translation by a Christian scribe. Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian manuscripts of Esdras simply refer to ‘the Messiah’.