Introduction and prayer
1 It came to pass in the thirtieth year on the twenty-second of the month,
2 I was in my house and I cried out, saying to the Most High, “Lord, grant (me) glory so that I may see your mysteries.”
3 When night fell the angel Michael, the archangel, came and said to me, “Prophet Ezra, lay aside bread for seventy weeks.” And I fasted just as he told me.
4 And the archistrategos Raphael came and gave me a storax staff,
5 and I fasted twice sixty weeks, and I saw the mysteries of God and his angels.
6 And I said to them, “I wish to plead with God concerning the Christian people. It were better that man were not born than that he entered the world.”
Ezra taken up to heaven: his prayer for mercy
7 Therefore, I was taken up into heaven and I saw in the first heaven a great command of angels and they led me to the judgments.
8 And I heard a voice saying to me, “Have pity upon us, Ezra elect of God.”
9 Then I began to say, “Woe to the sinners when they see the righteous man (elevated) above angels, and they are for fiery Gehenna.”
10 And Ezra said, “Have pity upon the works of your hands, merciful and greatly pitying one.
11 Condemn me rather than the souls of the sinners, for it is better to punish one soul and not to bring the whole world to destruction.”
12 And God said, “I shall give rest to the righteous in Paradise and I am merciful.”
13 And Ezra said, “Lord, Why do you show favor to the righteous?
14 For as a hired man completes his time of service and goes away, and again a slave serves his masters in order to receive his wage, thus the righteous man receives his reward in the heavens.
15 But, have mercy upon the sinners for we know that you are merciful.”
16 And God said, “I have no way to be merciful to them.”
17 And Ezra said, “(Be merciful) because they cannot sustain your anger.”
18 And God said, “(I am wrathful) because such (are the deserts) of such (men) as these.”
19 And God said, “I wish to keep you as both Paul and John.
20 You have given me uncorrupted the inviolate treasury, the treasure of virginity, the wall of men.”
Ezra's second prayer
21 And Ezra said, “It were better if man were not born; it were well if he were not alive.
22 The dumb beasts are a better thing than man, for they do not have punishment.
23 You took us and delivered us to judgment.
24 Woe to the sinners in the world to come, for their condemnation is endless and the flame unquenched.”