Or that safe and healthful habitations have been reserved for us, but we have lived wickedly?: For habitations see verse 80. Healthful is unexpected as a term to describe these places in heaven. Good News Bible renders safe and healthful as “safe and secure” (similarly Myers with “sound and secure”), but this is only to say the same thing twice. We must accept the word healthful for what it means: good health. The phrase safe and healthful speaks of the absence of physical danger and of disease in the age to come—two constant threats to our well-being in this age (compare verse 123). Alternative models for this verse are:

• How will we ever benefit from an eternal home free of danger and disease, if we have lived wicked lives in this age [or, world]?

• We will never benefit from an eternal home free of danger and disease, since we have lived wicked lives in this age.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Esdras. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2019. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.