Thirty years have passed since the city's destruction. In the heart of Babylon, a man named Salathiel, also called Ezra, lies restless on his bed. Sleep evades him; his thoughts keep welling up inside him, troubling his spirit. His mind’s eye sees the stark contrast: Zion, the holy city, is a pile of ruins, while the inhabitants of the conquering empire enjoy abundance. This painful paradox presses down on him, a deep disturbance in his soul. Unable to contain his grief, he turns his face upward in the darkness, beginning a reverent, anguished conversation with the Most High, seeking to make sense of a world turned upside down.

Reflections

The Lord presented in this troubled prayer is one of absolute sovereignty and intimate involvement. He is the one who "fashioned the earth ... alone," the crafter of life who "breathed into him the breath of life." He is a God of order, who plants paradise and establishes commands. He is also a God of covenant, choosing Abraham, loving him, and making an "eternal covenant with him." He reveals His power in terrifying majesty: He "bent down the heavens," "shook the earth," and "made the whole cosmos shudder." Yet, this is the very source of the confusion. This same powerful, covenant-making God now seems strangely silent. He appears to "sustain these sinners and have spared those who act without giving you a thought," even as He has "destroyed your people." The Lord here is both the faithful promise-keeper of the past and the inscrutable master of a painful, seemingly unjust present.

The text frames the human experience as a profound, recurring tragedy. A "disease" became "permanent" in the human heart, identified as the "inclination to do evil." This inclination is not an external force but an internal root. It ensures that history repeats itself in a sorrowful loop. The first Adam "was overcome," and "so were all those descended from him." Even after the cleansing flood, humanity "began again to act wickedly." The giving of the Law, a good gift, was not enough to solve the problem; the "wicked root" remained alongside it. This explains the fall of the holy city itself: its inhabitants sinned "just as Adam and all his descendants had done." The human condition is thus portrayed as a desperate struggle, possessing a knowledge of good but held captive by an internal compulsion toward failure.

This passage offers a powerful model for personal integration: the validation of honest, reverent complaint. It gives permission to question, to be "deeply disturbed" by the state of the world, and to bring that raw confusion directly to God. The speaker does not pretend to have answers; instead, he meticulously lays out his evidence, contrasting God's promises with the "countless godless acts" he sees rewarded. Applying this principle means refusing to settle for easy or pious-sounding platitudes when faced with injustice. It is the practice of holding two realities in tension: a deep belief in God's covenant and an honest acknowledgment of a world that often seems to contradict it. It is the difficult work of remaining in relationship, even in the midst of profound, unanswered questions.