Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 14:13

"And the priest of Jupiter whose [temple] was before the city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the multitudes." — Acts 14:13 (ASV)

The healing amazed and excited the crowd, and they shouted out in Lycaonian: “The gods have come down to us in human form!” (cf. 28:6). Barnabas they identified as Zeus, the chief of the Greek pantheon, probably because of his more dignified bearing. Paul they identified as Hermes, Zeus’s son by Maia and the spokesman for the gods, since “he was the chief speaker.” Archaeological findings have confirmed that both Zeus and Hermes were worshiped in Lycaonian Galatia. Approximately half a century before Paul’s first missionary journey, the Roman poet Ovid retold an ancient legend that may have been well known in southern Galatia and helps explain the wildly emotional response of the people to Paul and Barnabas. According to the legend, Zeus and Hermes once came to “the Phrygian hill country” disguised as mortals seeking lodging. Though they asked at a thousand homes, none took them in. Finally, at a humble cottage of straw and reeds, an elderly couple, Philemon and Baucis, freely welcomed them with a banquet that strained their poor resources. In appreciation, the gods transformed the cottage into a temple with a golden roof and marble columns. Philemon and Baucis they appointed priest and priestess of the temple, who, instead of dying, became an oak and a linden tree. As for the inhospitable people, the gods destroyed their houses. Seeing the healing of the crippled man and remembering the legend, the people of Lystra believed that Zeus and Hermes had returned, and they wanted to pay them homage lest they again incur the gods’ wrath. That the people shouted in Lycaonian explains why the apostles were so slow to understand what was afoot until the preparations to honor them as gods were well advanced. But when the priest of Zeus joined the crowd and began to do them homage, Paul and Barnabas realized what was about to happen. We can visualize the priest of Zeus bringing out sacrificial oxen draped in woolen “wreaths” and preparing to sacrifice at an altar that stood in front of the Temple of Zeus, hard by the city gates. And as the idolatrous worship proceeded, Paul and Barnabas began to see that they were the object of it.