“On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets”
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:36–40 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A summary: love God, love people.
The cultural key
'Which commandment is the great one?' was a live scholastic question: tradition counted 613 commandments and debated 'heavy' and 'light' ones. Jesus answers with the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5), recited by every Jew morning and evening, and pairs it with Leviticus 19:18. 'Depend' is literally 'hang' (kremannymi; Hebrew talah), the rabbinic idiom for derivation, as when everything is said to 'hang' on a text. Hillel had answered a similar challenge: 'What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; the rest is commentary; go and learn.'
Recovered meaning
Not a replacement of the commandments but their skeleton: every command in Scripture hangs from these two pegs, and any reading of the Law that doesn't trace back to love of God and neighbor has come off its hook.