Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 4.2 (53.2)

Summary: In the age to come, summer for the righteous, the servants of God will be revealed.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:148

Ταῦτα, φησί, τὰ δένδρα τὰ βλαστῶντα οἱ δίκαιοί εἰσιν οἱ μέλλοντες κατοικεῖν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τὸν ἐρχόμενον· ὁ γὰρ αἰὼν ὁ ἐρχόμενος θερεία ἐστὶ τοῖς δικαίοις, τοῖς δὲ ἁμαρτωλοῖς χειμών. ὅταν οὖν ἐπιλάμψῃ τὸ ἔλεος τοῦ κυρίου, τότε φανερωθήσονται οἱ δουλεύοντες τῷ θεῷ, καὶ πάντες φανερωθήσονται.

English · Claude translation

“These budding trees,” he said, “are the righteous who are going to live in the world to come; for the world to come is summer for the righteous, but winter for sinners. When, then, the mercy of the Lord shines forth, then those who serve God will be made manifest, and all will be made manifest.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:148 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1913), 138–305 · 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), and from the ancient Latin version where Lake prints it because the Greek is lost (from Sim. 9.30.3); 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

Eschatology

Cite this passage

Herm. Sim. 4.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/4/2/).

Plain text

Herm. Sim. 4.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/4/2/).