And all who heard him Two things here claim our attention. All who heard him were astonished: for they reckoned it a miracle, that a child should frame his questions with such correctness and propriety. Again, they heard Christ, and thus acted the part rather of scholars than of teachers. He had not yet been called by the Father, to avow himself a public teacher of the Church, and therefore satisfied himself with putting modest questions to the doctors. Yet there is no room to doubt that, in this first attempt, he already began to tax their perverse way of teaching: for what Luke afterwards says about answers, I consider as denoting, agreeably to the Hebrew idiom, any kind of discourse.

Answers: - The word αποκρισις here seems not to mean answers only, but what Jesus said by way of question to the doctors, Luke 2:46. So in Revelation 7:13, one of the elders is said to have answered, saying - when he only asked a question. Bp. Pearce.

And all that heard him were astonished,.... All in the sanhedrim, both the doctors, and their disciples, were amazed,
at his understanding; in the knowledge of the law, and of the Scriptures:
and his answers; which he returned to the questions the doctor's put to him, which were made with so much wisdom and judgment, that it was surprising in one of his years.