The crowd's response to the miracle shows both total excitement and total lack of comprehension. They cry out in Lycaonian, their heart language, that the gods Zeus and Hermes have come in human form. They repeatedly address Paul and Barnabas with divine homage. This is not surprising, for Ovid the Roman poet relates a legend of a previous visitation by Zeus and Hermes to the Phrygian region. They came in human form and inquired at one thousand homes, but none showed them hospitality. Only a poor elderly couple, Baucis and Philemon, took them in. The pair were rewarded by being spared when the gods flooded the valley and destroyed its inhabitants. The couple's shack was transformed into a marble-pillared, gold-roofed temple, and they became its priests.

The crowd's reaction to Paul and Barnabas, then, is understandable. They want to avoid punishment and garner any blessings that the gods may desire to dispense. They see Zeus, the weather god, and Hermes his messenger as the providers of fruitful harvests.

The crowd's response clearly illustrates the problem of communication to people with a non-Christian background. Unless the Holy Spirit opens their hearts and minds to receive and understand the gospel message as true, they will continue to interpret it and any miraculous manifestations in the only way they know how, in terms of their non-Christian religious beliefs and values. From one angle, this reinterpretation process simply is a communication problem. But from another angle, if the reinterpretation persists, it becomes syncretistic, permitting other worldviews to maintain themselves over against Christian truth claims.