Second Esdras (also known, confusingly, as 4 Esdras or 4 Ezra, and in parts as 5 Ezra and 6 Ezra) is a composite apocalyptic work quite different in character from the other books of Esdras. Its core, chapters 3-14, is a Jewish apocalypse usually called 4 Ezra, written in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple by Rome in 70 CE, though set fictively in the era after the earlier Babylonian destruction.
In it the seer, identified with Ezra, presses God with the hardest questions raised by that catastrophe: why God has allowed his people to suffer at the hands of a wicked empire, why so few will be saved, and how divine justice can be reconciled with the misery of history. Through a series of dialogues with the angel Uriel and a sequence of visions, among them a mourning woman transformed into a rebuilt city, and an eagle representing the Roman Empire, Ezra is led from protest toward a vision of a coming age, a final judgement, and a Messiah. To this Jewish core, Christian hands later added an opening (chapters 1-2) and a closing (chapters 15-16).