What does Luke 7:16 Mean?

Verse Meaning

Again Luke noted that the result of Jesus" ministry was that fear (Gr. phobos) gripped the people (cf. Luke 1:12; Luke 5:26). This is a natural human reaction to a demonstration of supernatural power. They also praised God that this act of power had such a beneficial effect (cf. Luke 2:20; Luke 5:25-26; Luke 18:43; Luke 23:47). [source][source]

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The people remembered the life-restoring miracles of Elijah and Elisha in that very neighborhood centuries earlier. They quickly concluded that God had sent them another prophet similar to them (cf. 1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:18-37). However calling Jesus a prophet was not the same as acknowledging Him as Messiah much less God. Their second exclamation did not necessarily mean that they acknowledged Jesus as God. It is an Old Testament expression meaning that God had sent help to His people ( Ruth 1:6; cf. Luke 1:68). Some of the people may have concluded that Jesus was Immanuel, God with us ( Isaiah 7:14), but their words allow a broader meaning. [source][source]

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Context Summary

Nain lay near the plain of Esdraelon, on the slopes of Little Hermon. Two confluent streams met there-those with Christ and those with death, Luke 7:11-12. He wipes away tears by removing the cause. When the young are being borne by their young companions to graves of sin, it is thus that the Master arrests them. See Ephesians 5:14. There was a threefold gradation in the power He put forth-to Jairus' daughter, just dead; to this young man, on the way to burial; and to Lazarus, who was three days dead. The depression from John's long confinement in the gloomy fortress of Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea, and the fact that Jesus had not sent to deliver him, were the double root of this sad lapse from the position taken up on the Jordan bank, when he recognized and indicated the Lamb of God. But our Lord did not chide; He understood, Psalms 103:9. His miracles of mercy and power are His best evidences, and He left John to draw his own conclusions, Isaiah 35:5-6. May ours be the blessedness of the un-offended, who will trust Christ, even though He does not hasten to deliver them just as they had hoped! [source]

Chapter Summary: Luke 7

¹  Jesus finds a greater faith in the centurion;
¹⁰  heals his servant, being absent;
¹¹  raises from death the widow's son at Nain;
¹⁸  answers John's messengers with the declaration of his miracles;
²⁴  testifies to the people what opinion he held of John;
³¹  compares this generation to the children in the marketplaces,
³⁶  and allowing his feet to be washed and anointed by a woman who was a sinner,
⁴⁴  he shows how he is a friend to sinners, to forgive them their sins, upon their repentance