And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. He listens to the Master with something like impatient surprise. There is a ring of concealed indignation in his "All these have I ever kept. What do you take me for?
I am a religious, God-fearing Jew; from my child-days have I kept these." Kept these! How little the poor questioner knew the secrets of his Own heart! Yet he had answered Jesus in the true spirit of a Pharisee trained carefully in the rabbinic schools.
We read, for instance, in the Talmud how "when Rabbi Chaninah was dying, he said to the angel of death, 'Go and fetch me the book of the Law, and see whether there is anything in it which I have not kept.'