Luke 5:26

Luke 5:26, in plain English

Everyone was amazed and filled with awe. They praised God and said, 'We've seen incredible things today!' It was a day no one would forget.

Why it's here

Even those who came to criticize couldn't deny what they had witnessed. The whole room was transformed by what happened.

Who's speaking

The crowd responds together with wonder, praise, and holy awe.

Where it sits in the story

When God moves powerfully, the only appropriate response is awe. These people knew they'd witnessed something beyond explanation — a glimpse of heaven's power breaking into their ordinary world.

The scholarly reading

The triple response — ekstasis ("ecstasy/amazement"), doxazō ("glorifying God"), and phobos ("reverential fear") — represents a complete theophanic reaction. The phrase paradoxa ("remarkable/paradoxical things") appears only here in the NT.

Language and setting

The crowd's reaction combines wonder, worship, and awe, suggesting they perceive divine presence without fully comprehending its christological implications.

Voice

Luke describes the collective response of the entire crowd to the healing.

Significance

The audience responds with the full range of emotions appropriate to a divine encounter. The word paradoxa suggests they recognize these events defy normal categories of understanding.

24But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins...” He said to the paralytic, “I tell you, get up, pick up your mat, and go home.”

25And immediately the man stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God.

26Everyone was taken with amazement and glorified God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

27After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him,

28and Levi got up, left everything, and followed Him.

Read all of Luke 5 — Peter hauls in a miraculous catch, a leper is cleansed, and a paralyzed man is lowered through a roof. Jesus is rewriting the rules of who belongs.