But as I went, my burden grew heavier than I could bear, and I cried unto the Lord in the sore grief of my heart. For all Israel seemed unto me even as sheep without a shepherd, a nation given over to servitude. For behold, the Scribes, and Lawyers, and all the Pharisees, had set their thought on vanity, and fed the people with chaff and not with wheat. Yea, they despised the poor and simple, and said that the “people of the land” could not attain to the knowledge of the Law. But as for the Priests and Sadducees, they were given over to the pursuit of wealth and to the pleasures of this world. And last of all, these Essenes were as naught save for themselves alone. For they took for their watchword the saying, “Withdraw thyself from an evil neighbour and consort not with the wicked:” therefore were they of no avail to the sinners of my people. For albeit that saying of Hillel was often in their mouths, which saith, “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace;” yet did they forget the last words of that saying, which bid us also to “love mankind and bring men nigh unto the Law.” For the Essenes bring no man nigh unto the Law save themselves only.
But when I came in my journey back to the well where Rabbi Jonathan and I had discoursed together, then did my despair so weigh upon me that I could not so much as cry unto the Lord; for the Lord seemed as one that heard not; and even as I had made a circle in my journey that day, and was now come back to the same place whence I had set forth at the first, and all in vain, even so did I seem to have journeyed these many years in a circle of vain thoughts, searching and groping after God; and all for naught. “For,” said I, “I have gone from the Scribes of Galilee to the teaching of John the Prophet, and from John the Prophet to the wisdom of the Greeks, and from the wisdom of the Greeks to the teaching of Philo the Wise; and yet seem I no nearer to God than before, but even where I was at the first. And they which did profess to guide, have been unto me as no guides. Therefore the foundations of my life are broken up, and the rock of my trust is become as unstable as water. Whithersoever I look, I see no one to avenge, no one to deliver; for the ways of the world are crooked, and sin is stronger than righteousness.”