And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.
Ver. 11. The gods are come down] See the force of an evil custom, and of a vain conversation, received by tradition from the fathers, 1 Peter 1:18 : these Lycaonians had heard out of the fables of their poets that Jupiter and Mercury came down of old to visit Lycaon their progenitor, and that for the discourtesy he offered them, they transformed him into a wolf. Hereupon they used to offer sacrifice to those dunghill deities, and now they suppose they have them in human shape among them.