2 Esdras — also called 4 Ezra in some scholarly editions — is a Jewish apocalyptic work composed in the wake of Jerusalem’s destruction by Rome in AD 70. Its core (chapters 3–14) is the original Jewish text, dated to the late first century; the framing material (chapters 1–2 and 15–16) is later Christian addition.
The book takes the form of seven visions given to “Ezra” (a literary persona drawing on the historical scribe of the post-exilic restoration). The first three visions are extended dialogues between Ezra and the angel Uriel that wrestle with theodicy: how can the destruction of Jerusalem and the suffering of God’s people be reconciled with God’s covenant faithfulness? The dialogues are unusually frank — Ezra presses hard, Uriel responds patiently but does not relieve the tension by easy explanation.
The fourth and fifth visions turn from dialogue to symbolic apocalyptic. The vision of the Eagle (chapters 11–12) is the book’s most-discussed section — a deliberate reworking of Daniel 7↗, reinterpreting its four-beast prophecy for the Roman Empire.
For the King James reader, 2 Esdras is the source of several phrases that have entered English religious idiom. The book was included in the Apocrypha section of early King James Bibles but was later removed from most Protestant editions. It is not in the Latter-day Saint canon.
The book is significant background for the New Testament — written within a generation of the apostolic period, it preserves the kind of post-70 Jewish reflection that the New Testament’s earliest readers were also working through. The shared apocalyptic vocabulary with Revelation in particular is worth noting.