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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 5:45 - 5:45
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45. ὅπως γένησθε κ.τ.λ. See note on Mat 5:9. To act thus would be to act like God, who blesses those who curse Him and are his enemies, by the gifts of sun and rain. This is divine. Mere return of love for love is a human, even a heathen virtue.
Shakespeare beautifully and most appropriately reproduces this thought in the appeal to the Jew on the Christian principle of mercy, which ‘droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven.’ Merchant of Venice, Act. IV. sc. 1. Comp. also Seneca, de Ben. I. 1. 9, Quam multi indigni luce sunt et tamen dies oritur.
The illustration would be far more telling in a hot eastern climate than with us. In the Hindoo mythology two out of the three manifestations of deity are Sun and Rain. The thought of God as giver of rain and fruitful seasons is seized upon by St Paul as a conception common to Jew and Gentile on which to found his argument at Lystra. Act 14:17.
βρέχει, used in this sense in the older Greek poets: βρέχε χρυσέαις νιφάδεσσιν (Pindar), afterwards it passed into the vernacular, but reappears in Polybius, it is frequent in the LXX., and in modern Greek the usual phrases are βρέχει, ‘it is raining,’ θὰ βρέξῃ, ‘it is going to rain.’