Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 6.3.4 (63.4)

Summary: The punishments are the troubles of this life: loss, want, sickness, insult.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:176

Ἤθελον, φημί, κύριε, γνῶναι τὰς ποικίλας ταύτας τιμωρίας, ποταπαί εἰσιν. Ἄκουε, φησί, τὰς ποικίλας βασάνους καὶ τιμωρίας. βιωτικαί εἰσιν αἱ βάσανοι· τιμωροῦνται γὰρ οἱ μὲν ζημίαις, οἱ δὲ ὑστερήσεσιν, οἱ δὲ ἀσθενείαις ποικίλαις, οἱ δὲ πάσῃ ἀκαταστασίᾳ, οἱ δὲ ὑβριζόμενοι ὑπὸ ἀναξίων καὶ ἑτέραις πολλαῖς πράξεσι πάσχοντες.

English · Claude translation

“I would like to know, sir,” I said, “what these various punishments are.” “Hear,” he said, “the various torments and punishments. The torments belong to this life: for some are punished with losses, others with want, others with various sicknesses, others with every kind of instability, others by being insulted by unworthy people and suffering in many other ways.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:176 · 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)

Cite this passage

Herm. Sim. 6.3.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/6/3/4/).

Plain text

Herm. Sim. 6.3.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/6/3/4/).