And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up. — On the word “lawyer” and its difference from the more generic “scribe,” see Note on Matthew 22:35. Here, as there, the “tempting” does not necessarily imply hostile purpose. It was simply a test-question to see if the new Teacher was sound in His view of the ethical obligations of the Law.
The question, though the same as that of the young man in Matthew 19:16, is not asked in the same tone. There it was asked by one anxiously seeking to inherit eternal life. Here there is a certain tone of self-conscious superiority, which required a different treatment. As the method of Socrates was to make men conscious of their ignorance of the true meaning of words which they repeated glibly, so here our Lord parries the question by another, makes him repeat his own formulated answer — an answer true and divine itself, identical with that which our Lord gave Himself (Matthew 22:37) — and then teaches him how little he had realised its depth and fulness. The commandment was “exceeding broad” above all that the teacher of Israel had imagined.