2 Esdras 10:5-17

1. 5 Then left I the meditations wherein I was, and spake to her in anger, saying,

2. 6 Thou foolish woman above all other, seest thou not our mourning, and what happeneth unto us?

3. 7 How that Sion our mother is full of all heaviness, and much humbled, mourning very sore?

4. 8 And now, seeing we all mourn and are sad, for we are all in heaviness, art thou grieved for one son?

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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?

8. 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;

9. 13 But the earth not so: for the multitude present in it according to the course of the earth is gone, as it came:

10. 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.

11. 15 Now therefore keep thy sorrow to thyself, and bear with a good courage that which hath befallen thee.

12. 16 For if thou shalt acknowledge the determination of God to be just, thou shalt both receive thy son in time, and shalt be commended among women.

13. 17 Go thy way then into the city to thine husband.

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