2 Esdras 4:10-12

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

¹⁰ He said to me, ‘You cannot understand the things with which you have grown up; ¹¹ how then can your mind comprehend the way of the Most High? And how can one who is already worn out^[a] by the corrupt world understand incorruption?’^[b] When I heard this, I fell on my face^{[c] 12} and said to him, ‘It would have been better for us not to be here than to come here and live in ungodliness, and to suffer and not understand why.’