What does Acts 14:11 mean?

Paul and Barnabas are in Lystra, sharing the story of Jesus, when Paul notices a crippled man. He sees the man has faith to be made well and tells him to stand (Acts 14:8–10). The crowd is amazed. They come up with the idea that these two men are Greek gods: that Barnabas is Zeus and Paul, who does most of the speaking, must be Hermes (Acts 14:12).

Scholars debate the details of what happens here, noting that Paul and Barnabas have a delayed understanding of what's happening (Acts 14:14). The fact that Luke explicitly mentions the crowd's language—Lycaonian—likely means Paul is preaching in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:18). That means the locals understand his message, but he cannot understand what the locals are saying in that same dialect. This may be why he doesn't seem to know what is going on until the priests arrive with sacrifices to the two "gods." However, Paul is from Tarsus, on the other side of the mountain range from Lystra; he may well speak Lycaonian.

As a classically trained Roman citizen, however, Paul will quickly interpret their motivation of a sacrifice. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, written in AD 8, Zeus and Hermes visit Phrygia, a district northwest of Lystra. They search for hospitality in a thousand different homes before an elderly couple invite them to their shack. In return, Zeus floods the neighborhood and turns their shack into a temple in the middle of the lake. The last thing the Lystrans want is to refuse hospitality for two Greek gods.