Further punishments
1 And the prophet said, “Pity, O Lord, the race of Christians.”
2 And I saw a woman suspended and four wild beasts were sucking upon her breasts.
3 And the angels said to me, “She begrudged giving her milk but also cast infants into the rivers.”
4 And I saw terrible darkness and night without stars or moon.
5 There is there neither young nor old, neither brother with brother nor mother with Child nor wife with husband.
6 And I wept and said, “O Lord, Lord, have mercy upon the sinners.”
Ezra taken to heaven
7 And as I said these things a cloudb came and seized me and took me up again to the heavens.
8 And I saw many judgments and I wept bitterly and I said,
9 “It were better if man did not come forth from his mother's belly.”
10 Those who were in punishment called out, saying, “Since you came here, holy one of God, we have obtained a slight respite.”
11 And the prophet said, “Blessed are they who bewail their own sins.”
Birth and its purpose
12 And God said, “Hear Ezra, beloved one! Just as a farmer casts down the seed of corn into the earth, so a man casts down his seed into a woman's place.
13 In the first (month) it is a whole, in the second it is swollen, in the third it grows hair, in the fourth it grows nails, in the fifth it becomes milky, in the sixth it is ready and quickened, in the seventh it is prepared, [in the eighth...], in the ninth the bars of the gateways of the woman are opened and it is born healthy on the earth.”
14 And the prophet said, “It were better for man not to have been born.
15 Alas, O human race, at that time when you come to judgment!”
16 And I said to the Lord, “Lord, Why did you create man and give him over to judgment?”
17 And God said in his exalted pronouncement, “I will not pardon those who transgress my covenant.”
18 And the prophet said, “Lord, where is your goodness?”
19 And God said, I prepared everything because of man and man does not keep my commandments.
Punishments and rewards
20 And the prophet said, “Lord, reveal to me the punishments and Paradise.”
21 And the angels led me away to the eastf and I saw the tree of life.
22 And I saw there Enoch and Elijah and Moses and Peter and Paul and Luke and Matthew and all the righteous and the patriarchs.
23 And I saw there the rpunishmentl of the air and the blowing of the winds and the storehouses of the ice and the eternal punishments.
24 And I saw there a man hanging by his skull.
25 And they said to me, “This one transferred boundaries.”
26 And there I saw great judgments and said to the Lord, “O Lord, Lord, which of men, having been born, did not sin?”
27 And they led me farther down in Tartarus and I saw all the sinners lamenting and weeping and evil mourning.
28 And I too wept, seeing the race of rnen punished thus.