2 Esdras 9:18-20

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

¹⁸ For there was a time in this age when I was preparing for those who now exist, before the world was made for them to live in, and no one opposed me then, for no one existed; ¹⁹ but now those who have been created in this world, which is supplied both with an unfailing table and an inexhaustible pasture,^[a] have become corrupt in their ways. ²⁰ So I considered my world, and saw that it was lost. I saw that my earth was in peril because of the devices of those who^[b] had come into it.