Mat 5:43-45 | NET2full | STEP | “You have heard that it was said , ‘ Love your neighbor ’ and ‘ hate your enemy .’

Matthew 5:43-45

Love for Enemies

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ ^{▼▼sn A quotation from Lev 19:18.} and ‘hate your enemy.’ ^{▼▼sn The phrase hate your enemy does not occur explicitly in the OT, but was commonly inferred from passages like Deut 7:2; 30:7; Ps 26:5; Ps 139:21-22. Jesus’ hearers (and Matthew’s readers) would not have been surprised by the statement. It is the antithesis Jesus gives in the following verses that would have shocked them.} 44 But I say to you, love your enemy and ^{▼▼tc Most mss (D L W Δ Θ ƒ13 33 565 579 700 1241 1424 Maj lat sy(p),h) read “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you,” before “those who persecute you.” But this is surely a motivated reading, importing the longer form of this aphorism from Luke 6:27-28. The shorter text is found in א B ƒ1 sys,c sa bopt mae, as well as several fathers.} pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be like ^{▼▼tn Grk “be sons of your Father in heaven.” Here, however, the focus is not on attaining a relationship (becoming a child of God) but rather on being the kind of person who shares the characteristics of God himself (a frequent meaning of the Semitic idiom “son of”). See L&N 58.26.} your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.