You shall not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Long before Christ it had been said, “You shall not covet”; long before it had been said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” a phrase which, as the apostle says, expresses the fulfillment of the whole law. And as no one loves himself unless he loves God, the Lord says that the whole Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.
Revenge, by private authority, or out of passion, which the pagans themselves acknowledged was more becoming a brute than a man, feræ est. (Musonias, Sen. de ira ii. 32.)
Citizens. Hebrew, "observe or lie not in wait. "Septuagint, "act not with fury against the son of thy people. "(Calmet)
Hebrew notor, means to upbraid when doing a kindness.
Thy friend. Hebrew rehaka, may denote thy neighbour, or any one with whom we have any thing to do. Thus God orders us to love strangers as ourselves, (ver. 34,) and to help our enemy, Exodus xxiii. 4. The false insinuations of the Jews are fully exploded by Jesus Christ, Matthew xxii. 39. We must love the offender, but detest the offence. (St. Augustine, contra Faust. xix. 24.) If God required his people to exterminate the Chanaanites, he did not authorized them to entertain any personal animosity against their persons, but they were to act as ministers of his justice. "O Lord, (said Philo very justly) we do not rejoice at the misfortune of our...
A person who does not divide with his needy neighbor what is necessary to him proves that he loves him less than himself. The command is to share two tunics with one’s neighbor: he could not have spoken of a single tunic, since if one is shared no one is clothed. Half a tunic leaves the person who receives it naked, as well as the person who gives it.
