And He answered and said unto me: 'Wherefore at that time he appointed for them a covenant and said: "Behold I have placed before you life and death," And he called heaven and earth to witness against them.

2For he knew that his time was but short, but that heaven and earth endure always.

3For after his death these sinned and transgressed (the covenant), though they knew that they had the law reproving (them), and the light in which nothing could err, also the spheres which testify, and Me.

4Now regarding everything that is it is I that judge, but do not thou take counsel in thy soul regarding these things, nor afflict thyself because of those which have been.

5For now it is the consummation of time that is sought, whether of business, or of prosperity, or of shame, and not the beginning thereof.

6Because if a man be prospered in his beginnings and shamefully entreated in his old age, he forgets all the prosperity that he had.

7And again, if a man is shamefully entreated in his beginnings, and at his end is prospered, he remembereth not again his evil entreatment.

8And again hearken: though each one were prospered all that time-- all the time from the day on which death was decreed against those who transgress-- and in his end was destroyed, in vain would have been everything.'