Matthew 5:43-45 New English Translation

Love for Enemies

⁴³“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’^[a] and ‘hate your enemy.’^[b] ⁴⁴But I say to you, love your enemy and^[c] pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so that you may be like^[d] 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.

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Footnotes

Matthew 5:43 sn A quotation from Lev 19:18.
Matthew 5:43 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.
Matthew 5:44 tc Most mss (D L W Δ Θ ƒ¹³ 33 565 579 700 1241 1424 M 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 sy^s,c sa bo^pt mae, as well as several fathers.
Matthew 5:45 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.

New English Translation (NET)