Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Love ye your enemies - This is the most sublime precept ever delivered to man: a false religion durst not give a precept of this nature, because, with out supernatural influence, it must be for ever impracticable. In these words of our blessed Lord we see the tenderness, sincerity, extent, disinterestedness, pattern, and issue of the love of God dwelling in man: a religion which has for its foundation the union of God and man in the same person, and the death of this august being for his enemies; which consists on earth in a reconciliation of the Creator with his creatures, and which is to subsist in heaven only in the union of the members with the head: could such a religion as this ever tolerate hatred in the soul of man, even to his most inveterate foe?
Lend, hoping for nothing again - . The rabbins say, he who lends without usury, God shall consider him as having observed every precept. Bishop Pearce thinks that, instead of we should read with the Syriac, later Arabic, and later Persic; and as signifies to despair, or cause to despair, the meaning is, not cutting off the hope (of longer life) of any man, neminis spem amputantes , by denying him those things which he requests now to preserve him from perishing.
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