2 Esdras 10:2-15
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2 Then we all overthrew the lights, and all my neighbours rose up to comfort me: so I took my rest unto the second day at night.
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3 And it came to pass, when they had all left off to comfort me, to the end I might be quiet; then rose I up by night and fled, and came hither into this field, as thou seest.
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4 And I do now purpose not to return into the city, but here to stay, and neither to eat nor drink, but continually to mourn and to fast until I die.
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5 Then left I the meditations wherein I was, and spake to her in anger, saying,
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6 Thou foolish woman above all other, seest thou not our mourning, and what happeneth unto us?
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7 How that Sion our mother is full of all heaviness, and much humbled, mourning very sore?
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8 And now, seeing we all mourn and are sad, for we are all in heaviness, art thou grieved for one son?
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9 For ask the earth, and she shall tell thee, that it is she which ought to mourn for the fall of so many that grow upon her.
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10 For out of her came all at the first, and out of her shall all others come, and, behold, they walk almost all into destruction, and a multitude of them is utterly rooted out.
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11 Who then should make more mourning than she, that hath lost so great a multitude; and not thou, which art sorry but for one?
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12 But if thou sayest unto me, My lamentation is not like the earth's, because I have lost the fruit of my womb, which I brought forth with pains, and bare with sorrows;
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13 But the earth not so: for the multitude present in it according to the course of the earth is gone, as it came:
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14 Then say I unto thee, Like as thou hast brought forth with labour; even so the earth also hath given her fruit, namely, man, ever since the beginning unto him that made her.
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15 Now therefore keep thy sorrow to thyself, and bear with a good courage that which hath befallen thee.