Luke 5:21 - Exposition

And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? It is very probable that some of those who stood by, had already, at Jerusalem, witnessed by the Bethesda Pool a wonder-work done by the same Jesus on the person of an impotent man lying there waiting for the troubling of the water ( John 5:5 , John 5:9 ), and had taken part there in an angry expostulation with the Wonder-worker, who on that occasion, in his words, "made himself equal with God" ( John 5:18 ). We know (see Luke 5:17 ) that some of the Jerusalem scribes were present that day in the Capernaum house. Again, thought these learned Jews, "this strange Man is uttering his dread blasphemies, but now in even more plain terms than there. '