2 BARUCH 14
What is the profit of being righteous?
14:1 And I answered and said: Behold, YOU have shown me the course of times, and that which will happen after these things.
14:2 And YOU have told me that the retribution of that which has been spoken by YOU will come upon the nations. And now, I know there are many who have sinned and who have lived in happiness and who have left the world, but there will be few nations left in those times to which those Words can be spoken which YOU said.
14:3 For what is the advantage (of this), or what evil worse than that which we have seen befall us can we expect to see?
14:4 But I will continue to speak before YOU.
14:5 What have they profited who have knowledge before YOU, and who did not walk in vanity like the rest of the nations, and who did not say to the dead: "Give life to us," but always feared YOU and did not leave YOUR ways?
14:6 And, behold, they have been diligent and, nevertheless, YOU had no mercy on Zion on their account.
14:7 And if there are others who did evil, Zion should have been forgiven on account of the works of those who did moraly right works and should not have been overwhelmed because of the works of those who acted unrighteously.
14:8 O YAHWEH, Sovereign Master, who can understand YOUR judgment? Or who can explore the depth of YOUR way?
14:9 Or who can discern the majesty of YOUR path? Or who can discern YOUR incomprehensible counsel? Or who of those who are born has ever discovered the beginning and the end of YOUR Wisdom?
14:10 For we all have been made like breath.
14:11 For as breath ascends without human control and vanishes, so it is with the nature of men, who do not go away according to their own will, and who do not know what will happen to them in the end.
14:12 For the righteous justly have excellent hope for the end and go away from this habitation without fear because they possess with YOU a store of moraly right works which is preserved in treasuries.
14:13 Therefore, they leave this world without fear and are confident of the world which YOU have promised to them with an expectation full of joy.
14:14 But woe to those of us who have also now been treated shamefully and who await evils at that time.
14:15 But YOU know exactly what YOU have made of YOUR servants, for we are not able to understand that which is excellent like YOU, YAHWEH our Creator.
14:16 I shall continue to speak before YOUR presence, O YAHWEH, Sovereign Master.
14:17 When in the beginning the world did not exist with its inhabitants, YOU devised and spoke by means of YOUR Word and at the same time the works of YOUR creation stood before YOU.
14:18 And YOU said that YOU would make a man for this world as a guardian over YOUR works that it should be known that he was not created for the world, but the world for him.
14:19 And now, I see that the world which was made for us, behold, it remains; but we, for whom it was made, depart.