CHAPTER 3
1 And I said: "LORD, my Lord, have I come into the world for this purpose that I might see the evils of my mother not (so) my Lord.
2 If I have found grace in Thy sight, first take my spirit that I may go to my father's and not behold the destruction of my ᵃmother.
3 For two things vehemently constrain me: for I cannot resist Thee, and my soul, moreover, cannot behold the evils of my mother.
4 But one thing I will say in Thy presence, Lord.
5 What, therefore, will there be after these things? for if Thou destroyest Thy city, and deliverest up Thy land to those that hate us, how shall the name of Israel be again remembered?
6 Or how shall one speak of Thy praises? or to whom shall that which is in Thy law be explained?
7 Or shall the world return to it's nature (of aforetime), and the age revert to primeval silence?
8 And shall the multitude of souls be taken away, and the nature of man not again be named?
9 And where is all that which Thou didst say to Moses regarding us?
2a R. H. Charles: "My mother. Cf. iii. 2,3; x. 16; Baruch iv. 9-16. This was a very natural term for a Jew to apply to Jerusalem. We find the correlative expression in Isa. xlix. 21; Matt xxiii. 37; Gal. iv. 25. It is the earthly Jerusalem that is referred to here, for the writer of B1 looks for a restored earthly Zion (see note on i. 4). Again the same title is applied to the fallen Jerusalem in 4 Ezra x. 7: 'Siou mater nostra omnium,' though there the writer looks for the restoration of Zion. In Gal. iv. 26 St. Paul uses it of the heavenly Jerusalem; for he has no further interest in the earthly. The earthly was the mother of Jews, but the heavenly of Christians. The earthly Jerusalem, as we should expect, in Matt. v. 35 is still 'the city of the great King.'"
See also 2 Esd. 2:30 |