Acts 17:20

20 For the things you are saying sound strange to us. We should therefore like to be told exactly what they mean."

Acts 17:20 Meaning and Commentary

Acts 17:20

For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears
Strange doctrines and strange deities, such as they had never heard of before:

we would know therefore what these things mean;
they desire he would explain these things to them, and let them know the rise, and ground, and nature, and end, and design of them.

Acts 17:20 In-Context

18 A few of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him. Some of them asked, "What has this beggarly babbler to say?" "His business," said others, "seems to be to cry up some foreign gods." This was because he had been telling the Good News of Jesus and the Resurrection.

19 Then they took him and brought him up to the Areopagus, asking him, "May we be told what this new teaching of yours is?

20 For the things you are saying sound strange to us. We should therefore like to be told exactly what they mean."

21 (For all the Athenians and their foreign visitors used to devote their whole leisure to telling or hearing about something new.)

22 So Paul, taking his stand in the centre of the Areopagus, spoke as follows: "Men of Athens, I perceive that you are in every respect remarkably religious.