Exegesis:
apokritheis ‘answering,’ cf. on 1.19.
agapēseis kurion ton theon sou ‘you shall love the Lord your God.’ The future tense of agapēseis has the force of an imperative. For the phrase kurios ho theos sous cf. on 1.16.
ex holēs [tēs] kardias sou ‘with all your heart,’ or, ‘with your whole heart.’ kardia, psuchē, ischus and dianoia together denote man in his totality; semantically they function together rather than separately. ek has instrumental force.
en holē tē psuchē sou ‘with all your soul.’ For psuchē cf. on 1.46. en has instrumental force.
en holē tē ischuï sou ‘with all your strength.’ ischus.
en holē tē dianoia sou ‘with all your mind.’ For dianoia cf. on 1.51.
kai ton plēsion sou hōs seauton scil. agapēseis ‘and (you shall love) your neighbour as yourself.’ ho plēsion is to be distinguished from hoi perioikoi, i.e. ‘those who live in the neighbourhood,’ cf. on 1.58.
Translation:
For the first of the two commandments in this verse see Mark 12.30, which is identical, except for one difference in phrase order. Most versions give a rather literal rendering with only minor adjustments, e.g. substituting ‘mind’ for “heart” (Marathi), ‘spirit,’ ‘life,’ or, ‘breath’ for “soul” (e.g. in Kele, Trukese; Marathi; Medumba), ‘animation,’ or, ‘ability’ for “strength” (e.g. in Yao; Trukese), and ‘thinking/thought(s),’ or, ‘intelligence’ for “mind” (cf. e.g. Kele, Trukese; Marathi). Such a rendering often is sufficiently idiomatic, but sometimes it has simply been accepted as a Biblical expression, even though it is decidedly unidiomatic as to its individual components, their combination, order and/or number, or to its construction (e.g. possession, impossible with the third and fourth term in some languages). Then one should preferably use the idiomatic way of referring to the totality of man’s spiritual and emotional faculties. This may lead to rather radical shifts and changes. Thus Pohnpeian and Chuukeseidiom would probably prefer an equivalent of the Biblical phrase ‘with flesh and body,’ and in Tboli, where a listing of the four faculties was first attempted but proved unsuccessful, the present translation of the sentence is, ‘cause it to start from the very beginning of your stomach your loving God, for he is your place of holding.’
For love see on 6.27. In a language like Balinese one must use ‘respectful love,’ since the object is God.
For soul see on 1.46.
Your neighbour as yourself, or filling out the ellipsis, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (cf. The Four Gospels – a New Translation, Bahasa Indonesia KB, Sundanese), ‘you shall love your neighbour as you love yourself,’ where necessary shifting to plural forms, or rendering the verb by a term for love between equals (Balinese). — Your neighbour. Some languages do as English, translating the noun by the term for a member of one’s local group used also in 1.58, e.g. ‘one who lives nearby’ (cf. Kele, Marathi), ‘co-dweller’ (Zarma), trusting to the context for making clear the expanded meaning the term has in the present verse. Several other versions use a term of wider application, such as ‘your fellow-man’ (Bahasa Indonesia, similarly Tae,’ using a reciprocal form built on ‘man’), ‘your fellow earth-dweller’ (Toraja-Sa’dan), ‘your companion as a person’ (Tzeltal, which in 1.58 uses ‘those at back and side’), ‘another person like you’ (Shona 1966).
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.