Exegesis:
agapēseis (cf. 10.21) ‘you shall love’: the future tense is volitive, expressing a command.
ex holēs tēs kardias sou ‘with all your heart’: cf. 2.6 for the Hebrew concept of ‘heart’ as the center of man’s intellectual activity.
ek ‘from’: indicates “the inner source from which something proceeds.”
ex holēs tēs psuchēs sou ‘with all your soul’: cf. 3.4 for the Hebrew concept of ‘soul’ as ‘the seat of the will, desires and affections’ (Abbott-Smith).
ex holēs tēs dianoias sou ‘with all your understanding’: this clause has no equivalent in the O.T. passage quoted (Deut. 6.5), which speaks only of levav ‘heart,’ nefesh ‘soul,’ and meʾod ‘might.’
dianoia (only here in Mark) ‘mind,’ ‘understanding,’ ‘intelligence’: often, in the Septuagint, it is used interchangeably with kardia ‘heart’ as a translation of the Hebrew levav
ex holēs tēs ischuos sou ‘with all your strength’: it is to be noticed that the passage in Mark does not follow the Septuagint here, which translates the Hebrew meʾod ‘might’ by dunamis. The two Greek words, ischus and dunamis, however, are close enough in meaning to become synonymous in certain contexts, as is the case here.
ischus (12.33) ‘strength,’ ‘might,’ ‘power.’
Translation:
For love see 10.21.
Lord your God, an appositional construction, must in some languages be changed to a type of dependent expression, consisting of a relative clause, e.g. ‘the Lord, who is your God.’
In many languages one cannot ‘love with the heart.’ For example, in Laka one must love with the liver; in Conob the equivalent expression is ‘abdomen’; in the Marshallese one can love with the throat. The heart is thus translated by a number of other terms which represent the emotional center or focus of the personality.
Soul is generally translated in two ways: (1) by means of words which identify that part of the personality which lives on after death, often called the ‘shadow’ or ‘the counterpart’ and (2) by means of terms for ‘life,’ ‘insides,’ or ‘person.’ In this context the latter meaning is involved, e.g. ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your life’ (Yaka). In Navajo the living soul is ‘that which stands inside of one.’
Mind may be translatable in some languages only as ‘thoughts,’ since the mind as separate from thoughts is not recognized.
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .