1. In the thirties year after the ruin of the city, I Salathiel (the same is Esdras) was in Babylon, and lay troubled upon my bed, and my thoughts came up over my heart:
2. for I saw the desolation of Sion, and the wealth of them that lived at Babylon.
3. And my spirit was sore moved, so that I began to speak words full of fear to the Most High, and said,
4. O Lord that bear rule, did you not not speak at the beginning, when you did fashion the earth, and that yourself alone, and command the dust.
5. and it gave you Adam, a body without a soul? yet it was the workmanship of your hands, and you did breathe into him the breath of life, and he was made living before you.
6. And you led him into paradise, which your right hand did plant, before ever the earth came forward.
7. And to him you gave your one commandment: which he transgressed, and immediately you appointed death for him and in his generations; and there were born of him nations and tribes, peoples and kindred, out of number.
8. And every nation walked after their own will, and did ungodly things before you, and despised your commandments, and you did not forbid them.
9. Nevertheless again in process of time you brought the flood upon those that lived in the world, and destroyed them.
10. And it came to pass that the same hap befell them; like as death was to Adam, so was the flood to these.
11. Nevertheless one of them you left, Noah with his household, even all the righteous men that came of him.