7:24: Wretched man that I am, who
will deliver me from this body of death!?
Similar plaintive cries. 4 Ezra
7:65ff.: “So let the human race mourn, but let the animals of the field
rejoice! May all those born of woman wail, but the livestock and wild animals
rejoice! Matters are much better for them than for us; for they have no
judgment to expect, they do not know about a torment, nor of a blessedness that
is promised to them after death. But we, what use is it to us to be able to
know that we could come to blessedness one day, but (in fact) we fall in
agonies? For all who have been born are disfigured by godlessness, full of
sins, laden with guilt. And it would be much better for us if we did not have
to face judgment after death!” — 4 Ezra 7:116ff.: “This remains my first and my
last word: It would be better if the earth had never brought forth Adam or at
least if she had kept him from sin. For how does it help us all that we must
live now in distress and have punishment to wait for after death? O, Adam, what
have you done! When you sinned, your fall did not come upon you only, but
rather upon us, your descendants! For how does it help us that eternity has
been promised to us, if we have done works of death? That an imperishable hope
has been promised to us, if we have fallen so miserably into vanity? That
dwellings full of enjoyment and peace have been prepared, if we have passed
away in wretchedness? That one day the glory of the Most High will shelter
those who have kept themselves pure, if we have walked in shameful ways? That
paradise, whose fruits remain forever, will appear, bestowing satiety and
healing, if we will never come into it, because we have tarried in awful
places? That the face of the pure ones will shine brighter than sunlight, if
our own face will be darker than the night? For, O, in life, in as much as we
committed sin, we did not remember the sufferings that await us after death!” ‖
Babylonian Talmud ʿErubin 18A: R. Simeon b. Pazzi (ca. 280) said (interpreting
the double yod in וייצר in Gen 2:7), “Woe to me because of my
(evil) inclination יִצְרִי! Wo to me because of my creator יוֹצְרִי! (If I resist the evil inclination, it torments me; if I give
into it, God punishes me.)” — The same is found in reverse sequence in b. Ber.
61A. (Hermann L. Strack
and Paul Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and
Midrash, ed. Jacob N. Cerone, 4 vols. [trans. Andrew Bowden and Joseph
Longarino; Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2021], 3:280)
