Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 10.3.2 (42.2)

Summary: A sorrowful man's prayer cannot rise to God's altar.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:116

ὁ δὲ λυπηρὸς ἀνὴρ πάντοτε πονηρεύεται· πρῶτον μὲν πονηρεύεται, ὅτι λυπεῖ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον τὸ δοθὲν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἱλαρόν· δεύτερον δὲ λυπῶν τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἀνομίαν ἐργάζεται, μὴ ἐντυγχάνων μηδὲ ἐξομολογούμενος τῷ κυρίῳ. Πάντοτε γὰρ λυπηροῦ ἀνδρὸς ἡ ἔντευξις οὐκ ἔχει δύναμιν τοῦ ἀναβῆναι ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον τοῦ θεοῦ.

English · Claude translation

But the sorrowful man always does evil: first he does evil because he grieves the Holy Spirit, which was given to the person cheerful; second, by grieving the Holy Spirit he commits lawlessness, not praying nor confessing to the Lord. For the prayer of a sorrowful man never has power to go up to the altar of God.”

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:116 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1913), 70–137 · Greek text: K. Lake, The Apostolic Fathers (LCL, 1912-1913), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Lake, LCL 25. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Lake (LCL 25, 1913); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Topics

Prayer

Cite this passage

Herm. Mand. 10.3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-mand/10/3/2/).

Plain text

Herm. Mand. 10.3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-mand/10/3/2/).