‘And when the multitude saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voice, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, “The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” And they called Barnabas, Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.'
Thus when they saw the miracle that had occurred, instead of coming to find out more and coming to the truth, they jumped to their own conclusions and saw these miracle workers as gods. It brought to their minds the legend of a previous visitation by Zeus and Hermes to their region. Then they had come in human form and enquired at one thousand homes for hospitality, but not one had received them. Then they came to the door of a poor elderly couple, Baucis and Philemon, who alaone were willing to take them in. The consequence was that the pair were rewarded by being spared when the gods flooded the valley and destroyed its inhabitants. Their shack was also transformed into a marble-pillared, gold-roofed temple, and they became its priests.
So these people did not want to risk being caught out as their ancestors had been. They declared that the gods must have come down in the likeness of men, and they hailed Barnabas as Zeus (for he was the older and probably the more distinguished looking and maintained a dignified silence), and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, as Hermes. Unfortunately they did it, not in Greek, but in Lycaonian, so that Paul and Barnabas did not understand what they were saying. (It is important to note that there is no gift of tongues in use here, which is a clear warning against seeing tongues as an evangelistic gift. For if Paul and Barnabas did not have it, who had?).
This description is true to the facts as we know them. The majority of the people of Lystra were uneducated ‘pagan' locals, ruled over by a Roman elite and educated, so far as they were educated, by a few Greeks. They thus preferred the use of their own language and on the whole did not have the sophistication of either Greeks or Jews. Furthermore we know from later inscriptions that Zeus and Hermes were especially worshipped in the area.