With their passion for definition, Jewish Rabbis sought to define who a man's "neighbor" was. They confined the word "neighbor" to include only their fellow Jews.
For instance, some of them said that it was illegal to help a Gentile woman in her time of childbirth for that would only bring another Gentile into the world. So, then the scribe's question, "Who is my neighbor?" was genuine. He was surely confused. Jesus' answer to him involves three things:
(i) We must help a man even when he has brought his trouble on himself, as the traveler had done.
(ii) Any man of any nation who is in need is our neighbor. Our help must be as wide as the love of God.
(iii) The help must be practical and not consist merely in feeling sorry. Maybe the priest and the Levite felt a pang of pity for the wounded man, but they did nothing about it.
Faith without works is dead.