Acts 28:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

But after they had looked a great while, &c.— Many of the Heathens thought there was something divine in thenature of serpents, and that deities, or good genii, who were made use of as the instruments of delivering and honouring those who were the peculiar favourites of the gods, often appeared in that shape. Hence idols were often made with serpents near them; and there have been numerous, and indeed astonishing instances of religious worship, absurd as it may seem, paid to that kind of animals. See the notes on Genesis 3:15. Grotius, Whitby, and some others, think that the Melitese took St. Paul for Hercules, Αλεξικακος, (the driver away of evil,) who was worshipped in this island, and was, according to Ptolemy, one of the gods of the Phoenicians. The Lystrans would have worshipped St. Paul as a god, and afterwards stoned him as a blasphemer, and the worst of men; chap. Acts 14:11-19. So soon do unthinking persons run from one extreme to another, and so little regard is to be had to the warmth of affection, where it is not grounded upon scripture, reason, and conviction.