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And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
22:37 There may be another trace of the second source in the use of ὁ δέ for the change of subject, as in Lk. 10:26, rather than Mark’s fresh use of Jesus’ name. Matthew’s failure to reproduce Mark’s quotation of Dt. 6:4 may be similarly inspired, as also the preference of ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ to Mark’s ἐξ ὅλης τῆς in each of the ‘with your whole …’ phrases (the LXX has Mark’s ἐξ ὅλης τῆς). For the quotation from Dt. 6:5 Matthew reduces the number of elements from Mark’s four to three, in line with the count in the OT text. Again an influence from the second source is most likely, given that Matthew’s reduction to three does not conform the set to the OT list, which would have required the dropping of διανοία (‘mind/understanding’) and not ἰσχύς (‘strength’). (The addition of διανοία to the list is likely to be related to its occurrence as a variant to καρδία [‘heart’] in the LXX of Dt. 6:5 and other texts.)
Except for Lk. 11:42, which is probably ultimately dependent on the present pericope, this account (in each of the Synoptic Gospels) provides the only Synoptic reference to loving God. ‘But no language better sums up the passion for God, the intimacy with God, and the fidelity to God that were the hallmarks of Jesus’ own life, and to which he called others.’109 The call to love God has a strong OT pedigree; it occurs no fewer than ten times in Deuteronomy alone (admittedly a place of special concentration). In the Gospel pericope, ‘ “Your heart” denotes a response to God from the innermost personal center of one’s being; “your life” (“soul”) conjures up the role of the life force that energises us; … “your mind” signals the inclusion of the thinking and planning processes. The challenge is to a comprehensive engagement with God with the total capacity of all of one’s faculties’.111 The omission of ἰσχύς (‘strength’) from the list tends to let the focus on love for God fall on the inner dispositions and thoughts, leaving the sphere of energetic physical action to love of neighbour.1
1 Nolland, J. (2005). The Gospel of Matthew: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 911). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Matthew 1. Attempts to Trap Jesus, 22:15–46
35. Matthew says that one of them now put another question to Jesus (so the Pharisaic inquisition was still on the job), this one described as a lawyer. From the form of the question we might be ready to think it was a genuine quest for information, but since Matthew expressly says that the lawyer was testing him we must view this as another attempt to entrap Jesus. The restless attempts to trick Jesus into an answer that would discredit him either with the authorities or with the general public continued. His opponents never learned that they were on a futile quest.