TEXT [Commentary]

14. The Pharisee lawyer’s question concerning the greatest commandment (22:34-40; cf. Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28)

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. 35 One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’[*] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[*] 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

NOTES

22:34-36 they met together. When the Pharisees learned that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they got together for yet another attempt to trap him (cf. Mark 12:28-34). There may be an allusion to the gathering of the nations against the Lord’s anointed in Ps 2:2 here. It will be their last. Ironically, the Pharisees would have agreed with Jesus’ response to the Sadducees, but this was a small matter in comparison to their many problems with Jesus.

an expert in religious law. This was a Pharisaic legal expert, not merely a disciple of the Pharisees (22:16).

the most important commandment. The request that Jesus identify the greatest commandment in the law may reflect a debate within Judaism at that time (Blomberg 1995:334), but its purpose was to trap Jesus, not to gain insight into the law (cf. 16:1; 19:3; 22:15). The OT itself at times presents summaries of the crucial demands of the law (e.g., Mic 6:8). A different view is found in the Mishnah, where the idea is expressed that the more commandments, the better, since there is more potential for merit for Israel (m. Makkot 3:16; m. Avot 6:11). On the other hand, Montefiore and Loewe (1974:199-201) cite several passages from the Talmud and Midrashim where certain key commandments are prioritized. Of these, b. Makkot 23b-24a in the Babylonian Talmud is most noteworthy, since it progressively reduces the 613 commandments of the Torah, 365 negative and 248 positive commandments, to one commandment: “the just will live by faith” (Hab 2:4).

22:37-39 You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the most straightforward of all Jesus’ answers to questions in this section of Matthew. Jesus immediately replied by citing Deut 6:5 as the greatest commandment. The words “with all your heart, . . . soul, and . . . mind” stand for the whole person; they do not distinguish aspects of one’s being which are responsible to love God from those which are not. Jesus’ description of Deut 6:5 as the “first and greatest commandment” is similar to the phrase “the more important aspects of the law” in 23:23.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus followed the greatest commandment with another of similar import, Lev 19:18. The former text enjoins love for God with one’s entire being, and the latter love for one’s neighbor (cf. 5:43; 19:19; Josh 22:5; Luke 10:25-28). The description of Lev 19:18 alongside Deut 6:5 is striking because the second text echoes the obligation of love from the first but changes the object from God the Creator to humans as God’s creatures (cf. Lev 19:34). Both of these passages were crucial to the Judaism of Jesus’ day. Pious Jews recited the Shema, a prayer named for the first word of Deut 6:4, twice daily (m. Berakhot 1:1-2). Rabbinic sources allude to Lev 19:18 as the fundamental principle of the law (Sifra Lev 19:18; b. Shabbat 31a; cf. Philo, On the Special Laws 2.15, 63).

22:40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments. After citing these two texts, Jesus stated that all of the law and prophets depend (lit. “hang”) on them. In other words, the entire OT may be viewed as an exposition of the ideals expressed in these two verses. There is no mention here of the lawyer’s response (but see Mark 12:32-34), or even of his departure. In contrast to the two preceding interviews, the lawyer probably found no fault with Jesus and had no rejoinder to him. Perhaps 22:46 describes this interchange as well as that of 22:41-45. At any rate, the episode closes with the words of Jesus still ringing in the reader’s ears.

COMMENTARY [Text]

This third story concerning Jesus’ interaction with the religious leaders is the least controversial. In this exchange, reminiscent of the teaching of 7:12, Jesus succinctly synthesized the ethical teaching of the Old Testament. A prominent part of Jesus’ teaching has been his relationship to the law (5:17-48). The legal expert’s question indicates how Jesus’ view of the law compares with that of his contemporaries (Hagner 1995:644). Jesus did not set love over against the law but, as always, got to the heart of obedience to the law, which is love for God and for those who are created in God’s image. If one truly loves God, one will love those created in his image (cf. Jas 3:9-10). When one loves human beings, one indirectly expresses love to their Creator. This basic principle is the basis of the specific stipulations of the Mosaic code, and of the message of the prophets who sought to call Israel back into obedience to Moses (9:13; 12:7; 23:23). Other New Testament texts echo this one in affirming that love is the root obligation of the law (Rom 13:9-10; Gal 5:14; Col 3:14; Jas 2:8; cf. Furnish 1972).

The Theological Significance of These Commandments. The NLT’s description of Leviticus 19:18 as “equally important” to Deuteronomy 6:5 may be a bit overstated, although it has strong scholarly support (cf. omoios, BDAG 706; Davies and Allison 1997:243). Literally, the expression is “similar to” or “of the same nature as.” One could argue that by labeling Deuteronomy 6:5 as the “first and greatest commandment” Jesus intended it to be viewed as foundational for Leviticus 19:18. Can fallen humans begin to love their neighbors as themselves if they have not first acknowledged God’s grace to them and their prior obligation to love God? Divine love to humans enables them to respond in love to God and their fellow humans. It would appear, then, that the theocentric or vertical obligation is the basis of the anthropocentric or horizontal obligation. This is the reason why the statement “I am the Lord your God” appears at the beginning of the ten commandments (Exod 20:2; Deut 5:6). While Leviticus 19:18 may be equally important as Deuteronomy 6:5, it cannot stand apart from the foundation of Deuteronomy 6:5. And without Leviticus 19:18, one cannot practice Deuteronomy 6:5, since one expresses love to God by obeying his commandments, many of which concern relationships with people. Hagner (1995:648) correctly notes that loving God involves reverence and obedience, while loving humans involves serving them and seeking their well-being.

Leviticus 19:18 and its New Testament echoes assume that one will instinctively love oneself. The modern psychological jargon about the necessity of learning to love oneself as a prerequisite for loving God and one’s neighbor seems to turn the biblical pattern on its head (cf. Eph 5:28-29). No doubt one must have a biblical view of oneself as a flawed yet redeemed individual, but this hardly amounts to uncritical self-affirmation. For Paul, it is crucial to view oneself as a new creation “in Christ” (e.g., Rom 6:1-4; 2 Cor 5:17; Col 3:1-4), but this amounts to self-crucifixion, which is not far from the counsel of Jesus to take up one’s cross (Gal 2:20; 6:14). For Jesus, self-love is death, and self-denial is life (10:38-39; 16:24-25).