Graphic Bible · Scene 6 of 7

Hermas listens carefully to the teaching about the vessel and departing spirit, without literal spiritual beings.
AI-generated artwork interprets this work's literary visions and teaching, not authenticated historical events or portraits. Source and translation notes preserve the available edition's limits and review uncertainty. Reported literary teaching

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Mandate 5, section i

The available POB edition is a partial translation, not a summary or the complete ancient work. Popular, not Scripture. Artwork interprets literary visions and teaching; it does not establish their portrayals as historical events.

Source and translation notes

The text names Hermas as its narrator. The illustrations do not identify a historical author or supply authenticated portraits.

Existing reader manuscript-image reference: Codex Sinaiticus. Working source: Lightfoot & Harmer 1891 (normalized OCR) · Greek

English witness: People's Open Bible provisional English rendering (Cartha Inc. and contributors) · CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — for POB project outputs; source editions retain their original licenses

Numbered reading units are modern paragraph divisions, not ancient verse numbers. The available units follow Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes; absent passages are not reconstructed.

  • The available edition begins mid-dialogue and ends mid-sentence in Similitude 8.iv; absent passages are not supplied.

Shepherd of Hermas 32:6

The Vessel and the Departing Spirit

Long-suffering, Honey, and the Warning about Quick Temper · Shepherd of Hermas 32

Story guide: The teaching describes a vessel unable to contain the spirits together and the tender spirit’s departure from harshness.

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6For when all these spirits dwell in one vessel, the very vessel in which the holy spirit also dwells, that vessel cannot contain them; it overflows. The tender spirit, having no habit of dwelling with an evil spirit or with harshness, withdraws from such a person and seeks to dwell with gentleness and quiet. Then, when it has departed from that person in whom it dwells, that person becomes empty of the righteous spirit; and thereafter, being filled with evil spirits, he is unstable in all his deeds, dragged here and there by the evil spirits, and is altogether blinded from his good understanding. Thus it happens to all who are quick-tempered.

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