TRANSLATION MATTHEW 22: 34

When the Pharisees heard that he had shut the mouths of the Sadducees, they gathered to try their hand; and one of them who was skilled in the Law, asked a question to test him. “Teacher, what is the great command in the Law?”

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This command is the great one and the first one. And the second is like it; you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commands hang all the Law and the Prophets.

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Matthew wants to show that Jesus is the true interpretation of the Jewish Law, both in his actions and his teaching. In the stories of the testing of Jesus by legal experts, he reveals him not only as orthodox, but more than that, as an authoritative and creative master of the Law.

It is unclear if anyone before Jesus highlighted these two commands as he did; if so there is no evidence of it. His marrying of love of God and love of neighbour sums up not only the Law and the Prophets, but also his own ministry. We are reminded a) that Jesus himself loved God with heart and soul and mind, so that he was able to teach the essentials of faith with surpassing clarity; and b) that he is the Jewish son of God, leaving space for say, The Buddha, to be the Indian son. The Buddha did not deal with the great Jewish tradition of religion, any more than Jesus with the Indian.

try their hand: Greek “epi to auto,” meaning “for the same” or “to themselves” I have gone with the first option, “for the same purpose as the Sadducees “

The great command: most translation have “greatest,” but the Greek has simply, great. It is a dodgy question, as in a sense, all the commands are great, a truth much emphasised by Pharisees. Any acceptable answer must therefore encompass as Jesus’s does, the whole Law.

The great, first command is quoted from Deuteronomy 6, which was a more central passage in Jewish religion than Leviticus 19, which provides the second, although of course both would be well-known by Pharisees. Maintaining both is essential to discipleship of Jesus: emphasising one to the detriment of the other weakens both faith and human kindness.

Bible students should note that here Jesus supplies an interpretive key to the scriptures. Interpretations which do not help us to love God and our neighbour are false. “On these two commands hand all the Law and the Prophets.”