Actschapter 14
28 verses · BSBActs book hub →
Speaks with:Acts 13×7Acts 14×6Acts 11×32 Timothy 3×4Acts 17×2Acts 20×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Iconium; Lystra (the lame man healed; the crowds call them gods; Paul stoned and left for dead); Derbe. Return through the cities, confirming the souls of the disciples. Return to Antioch; report on what God had done.
Context
History · Luke — Acts overview
- A. 1–7 Iconium: A City Divided and a Plot to Stone Them
- B. 8–20 Mistaken for Gods at Lystra, Then Left for Dead
- C. 21–28 Back Through the Cities, Appointing Elders
The outline
A.Iconium: A City Divided and a Plot to Stone Themvv. 1 to 7
Read vv. 1 to 7 →B.Mistaken for Gods at Lystra, Then Left for Deadvv. 8 to 20
Read vv. 8 to 20 →C.Back Through the Cities, Appointing Eldersvv. 21 to 28
Read vv. 21 to 28 →
The world behind this chapter
Acts 14The history
Lystra was a Roman colony but a country one, and the crowd shouts in Lycaonian, the local language, which is why Paul and Barnabas do not realize at first what is being said. That single detail says how far from the Greek-speaking cities they had come.
Calling them Zeus and Hermes was not random. A local legend, told by the Roman poet Ovid, had Zeus and Hermes visiting that region disguised as travellers; only one old couple took them in, and the neighbours who turned them away were destroyed. A town with that story in its bones would not make the same mistake twice.
The priest brings oxen and garlands to the gates — the standard shape of a Greek sacrifice, with the animals decked before slaughter. Paul and Barnabas tearing their clothes was the recognized Jewish sign of horror at blasphemy.
The same crowd stones Paul days later, after opponents arrive from the cities behind them. Mobs turned fast in honour-shame towns, and a man dragged outside the walls and left for dead was assumed to be finished.
What it meant to them
Readers who had never known Israel's Scriptures got their first sight here of how the gospel was preached to them: not from Moses and the prophets but from rain, harvests, and full stomachs — the witness God had left with every nation.
The end of the chapter mattered just as much. Paul went back through the towns where he had nearly been killed, appointed elders in each church, and told them plainly that entering the kingdom would mean many hardships. Nothing was promised except that they would not be left leaderless.
Sources cited
- William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Acts 14. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.