2. The answer of our Lord was not without its further results. As we conceive it, among those who listened to the brief but decisive passage between Jesus and the Sadducees were some Scribes' - Sopherim, or, as they are also designated, lawyers,' teachers of the Law,' experts, expounders, practitioners of the Jewish Law. One of them, perhaps he who exclaimed: Beautifully said, Teacher! hastened to the knot of Pharisees, whom it requires no stretch of the imagination to picture gathered in the Temple on that day, and watching, with restless, ever foiled malice, the Saviour's every movement. As the Scribe' came up to them, he would relate how Jesus had literally gagged' and muzzled' [5206] the Sadducees - just as, according to the will of God, we are by well-doing to gag the want or knowledge of senseless men.' There can be little doubt that the report would give rise to mingled feelings, in which that prevailing would be, that, although Jesus might thus have discomfited the Sadducees, He would be unable to cope with other questions, if only properly propounded by Pharisaic learning. And so we can understand how one of the number, perhaps the same Scribe, would volunteer to undertake the office; [5207] and how his question was, as St. Matthew reports, in a sense really intended to tempt' Jesus.
We dismiss here the well-known Rabbinic distinctions of heavy' and light' commandments, because Rabbinism declared the light' to be as binding as the heavy,' [5208] those of the Scribes more heavy' (or binding) than those of Scripture, [5209] and that one commandment was not to be considered to carry greater reward, and to be therefore more carefully observed, than another. [5210] That such thoughts were not in the mind of the questioner, but rather the grand general problem - however himself might have answered it - appears even from the form of his inquiry: Which [qualis] is the great - the first' [5211] - commandment in the Law?' So challenged, the Lord could have no hesitation in replying. Not to silence him, but to speak the absolute truth, He quoted the well-remembered words which every Jew was bound to repeat in his devotions, and which were ever to be on his lips, living or dying, as the inmost expression of his faith: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.' And then continuing, He repeated the command concerning love to God which is the outcome of that profession. But to have stopped here would have been to propound a theoretic abstraction without concrete reality, a mere Pharisaic worship of the letter. As God is love - His Nature so manifesting itself - so is love to God also love [5212] to man. And so this second is like' the first and great commandment.' It was a full answer to the Scribe when He said: There is none other commandment greater than these.'
But it was more than an answer, even deepest teaching, when, as St. Matthew reports, He added: on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' [5213] It little matters for our present purpose how the Jews at the time understood and interpreted these two commandments. [5214] They would know what it meant that the Law and the Prophets hung' on them, for it was a Jewish expression ({hebrew}). He taught them, not that any one commandment was greater or smaller, heavier or lighter, than another - might be set aside or neglected, but that all sprang from these two as their root and principle, and stood in living connection with them. It was teaching similar to that concerning the Resurrection; that, as concerning the promises, so concering the commandments, all Revelation was one connected whole; not disjointed ordinances of which the letter was to be weighed, but a life springing from love to God and love to man. So noble was the answer, that for the moment the generous enthusiasm of the Scribe, who had previously been favorably impressed by Christ's answer to the Sadducees, was kindled. For the moment, at least, traditionalism lost its sway; and, as Christ pointed to it, he saw the exceeding moral beauty of the Law. He was not far from the Kingdom of God. [5215] Whether or not he ever actually entered it, is written on the yet unread page of its history.