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The angel has laid aside the sickle, and the willow remains sound.
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 scene

Historical Library · Apostolic Fathers
Shepherd of Hermas — Similitude 8, 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.
  • Reading paragraph 1 [a]: Repentance and related expressions are read in this works own context; they are not restricted to feeling sorry, and no uniform Godward formula is imposed. Use repentance for moral change while preserving the works own teaching about baptism, forgiveness, conduct and the angel of repentance; do not impose a different tradition on it.

Shepherd of Hermas 60:3

The Sound Tree

The Willow and the Returned Rods · Shepherd of Hermas 60

Story guide: The willow remains sound, Hermas marvels and the guide tells him to wait.

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3After all had received the rods, the angel laid aside the sickle, and that tree was sound, just as I had seen it before. I marveled within myself, saying, How is the tree sound, with so many branches cut off? The shepherd says to me, Do not marvel that the tree remained sound though so many branches were cut off. But wait until you see everything, and it will be shown to you what it is.

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