Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 6.2.3 (62.3)

Summary: Those who blaspheme God are given to death, without repentance.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:172–174

λέγω αὐτῷ· Κύριε, οὐ γινώσκω ἐγώ, τί ἐστιν εἰς θάνατον καὶ τί εἰς καταφθοράν. Ἄκουε, φησίν· ἃ εἶδες πρόβατα ἱλαρὰ καὶ σκιρτῶντα, οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἀπεσπασμένοι ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς τέλος καὶ παραδεδωκότες ἑαυτοὺς ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου. ἐν τούτοις οὖν μετάνοια ζωῆς οὐκ ἔστιν, ὅτι προσέθηκαν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις αὐτῶν καὶ εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐβλασφήμησαν. τῶν τοιούτων οὖν ὁ θάνατός ἐστιν.

English · Claude translation

I said to him, “Sir, I do not know what ‘to death’ and ‘to corruption’ mean.” “Hear,” he said: “the sheep you saw cheerful and skipping are those who have been torn away from God completely and have given themselves over to the desires of this world. In these, then, there is no repentance to life, because they have added to their sins and blasphemed the name of God. Death belongs to such people.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:172–174 · 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. 6.2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/6/2/3/).

Plain text

Herm. Sim. 6.2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/6/2/3/).