Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Ver. 17. Every good gift, &c.] A hexameter verse in the Greek; as little intended perhaps by the apostle as the first line in Tacitus, which yet may be scanned a long verse.
And perfect giving] Not temporals only (which are good gifts), but spirituals also, those perfect givings. The greatest excellencies in us do as much depend upon God as the effigies in the glass doth upon the face that causeth it; or as the light doth upon the sun, that father of all the light in the lower world.
With whom is no variableness] παραλλαγη, no parallax, as there is with the sun, when he declines and leaves us darkling. This word notes the sun's motion from east to west, as the following word τροπη, turning, notes his motion every year from north to south. That which the apostle would here assert is, that God tempts no man to evil, because he is unchangeably good, and can be no other.