The first commandment is this: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus not only gives the desired answer to the scribe's question as to the first commandment. He adds to that by giving the second commandment: the love of neighbor. Why this generosity? Why going the extra mile? Jesus knew that there was always an "over-emphasis" on the first commandment to the detriment of implementing it. It might have been the case that the people stopped short of doing what the commandment demanded. Yes, they had learned this particular commandment from their youth. They knew it by heart. Actually they sang it. It was THE hinge around which their entire religious corpus revolved. The only shortcoming was that they failed to understand what the commandment meant or what it demanded of them. For according to Jesus, one could only keep the commandment by doing it. And doing it needed an object- an object to which the action would be directed. And that couldn't be God. No. It is the neighbor. It is in the neighbor that the greatest and first commandment can be grounded.