Audiobook: The Book of 2 Esdras a.k.a. 4 Ezra

This is an uninterrupted reading of the complete book (includes the "missing" verses from Chapter 7). Chapter designations are indicated in the audio and on the title screen for convenience.

Ezra was a prophet, priest and scribe, counted worthy to speak with the Most High Creator, who asks all the tough questions and gets answers that are as surprising as they are revealing and comforting.

ESDRAS is the Graecized form (Εσδρας) of the name of the scribe EZRA, used throughout the Apocrypha.

The object of this book was to comfort the chosen people of God who were suffering under the grinding oppression of the heathen, by assuring them that the Lord has appointed a time of deliverance when the oppressors shall be judged, and the ten tribes of Israel, in union with their brethren, shall return to the Holy Land to enjoy a glorious kingdom which shall be established in the days of the Messiah. This is gradually developed in an introduction, and Seven angelic revelations, or visions, in which Ezra is instructed in the mysteries of the moral world.

In several manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, as well as in all the printed editions anterior to the decree of the Council of Trent, and in many since that period, there will be found four books following each other, entitled the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th books of Ezra. The first two are the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the 3d and 4th are the same which are called 1st and 2d Esdras in the English Authorized Version.

(above notes adapted from the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature)