Acts 9:5

And he said, who art thou, Lord?.... For he knew not whether it was God, or an angel, or who it was that spake to him; he knew not Christ by his form or voice, as Stephen did, when he saw him

And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he said, Who art thou, Lord?

Who art thou, Lord? Saul was in a great consternation and doubting, whether it was God, or an angel. Jesus whom thou persecutest: though he did not intend this persecution against Christ, yet our Saviour looks upon the good or evil done unto his members as done unto himself. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks: this kicking against the pricks is a proverbial speech, taken either from oxen or slaves, whom they used with goads to prick on to their work, which when they kicked against, or opposed themselves to, they did not hurt the goads or pricks, but themselves; so shall all persecutors find that their mischiefs recoil upon themselves; Christ and his members shall be made here glorious by it: this metaphor is common in Scripture, . The pricks Saul had kicked against, were the sermons and miracles of St. Stephen and others.

5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. Ver. 5. To kick against the pricks] A metaphor from oxen pushing back upon the goad, when they are pricked therewith, as Beza showeth out of Aeschilus.

(5) Who art thou, Lord?—The word “Lord” could not as yet have been used in all the fulness of its meaning. As in many cases in the Gospels, it was the natural utterance of respect and awe (John 5:7; John 9:36; John 20:15), such as would be roused by what the persecutor saw and heard. I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.—Some of the best MSS. give “Jesus of Nazareth”; or better, perhaps, Jesus the Nazarene. It is probable, however, that this was inserted from Acts 22:18, where it occurs in St. Paul’s own narrative. Assuming the words to have been those which he actually heard, they reproduced the very Name which he himself, as the chief accuser of Stephen, had probably uttered in the tone of scorn and hatred (Acts 6:14)—the very Name which he had been compelling men and women to blaspheme. Now it was revealed to him, or to use his own suggestive mode of speech, “in him” (Galatians 1:16), that the Crucified One was in very deed, as the words of Stephen had attested, at the right hand of God, sharing in the glory of the Father. The pronouns are both emphatic, “I, in my Love and Might and Glory, I am the Jesus whom thou, now prostrate and full of dread, hast been bold enough to persecute.” It was not the disciples and brethren alone whom Saul was persecuting. What was done to them the Lord counted as done unto Himself (Matthew 10:40). It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.—There is a decisive preponderance of MS. authority against the appearance of these words here, and the conclusion of nearly all critics is that they have been inserted in the later MSS. from Acts 26:14. As they occur in the English text, however, and belong to this crisis in St. Paul’s life, it will be well to deal with them now. In their outward form they were among the oldest and most familiar of Greek proverbs. The Jew who had been educated in the schools of Tarsus might have read them in Greek poets (Æschylus, Agam. 1633; Pindar, Pyth. ii. 173; Eurip. Bacch. 791), or heard them quoted in familiar speech, or written them in his boyhood. They do not occur in any collection of Hebrew proverbs, but the analogy which they presented was so obvious that the ploughmen of Israel could hardly have failed to draw the same lesson as those of Greece. What they taught was, of course, that to resist a power altogether superior to our own is a profitless and perilous experiment. The goad did but prick more sharply the more the ox struggled against it. Two of the passages cited apply the words directly to the suffering which man is sure to encounter when he resists God, as e.g.— “With God we may not strive: But to bow down the willing neck, And bear the yoke, is wise; To kick against the pricks will prove A perilous emprise.” —Pind. Pyth. ii. 173.

Verse 5. Who art thou, Lord?] τιςει, κυριε; Who art thou, SIR? He had no knowledge who it was that addressed him, and would only use the term κυριε, as any Roman or Greek would, merely as a term of civil respect. I am Jesus whom thou persecutest] "Thy enmity is against me and my religion; and the injuries which thou dost to my followers I consider as done to myself." The following words, making twenty in the original, and thirty in our version, are found in no Greek MS. The words are, It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks: and he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? and the Lord said unto him. It is not very easy to account for such a large addition, which is not only not found in any Greek MS. yet discovered, but is wanting in the Itala, Erpen's Arabic, the Syriac, Coptic, Sahidic, and most of the Slavonian. It is found in the Vulgate, one of the Arabic, the AEthiopic, and Armenian; and was probably borrowed from Acts 26:14, and some marginal notes. It is wanting also in the Complutensian edition, and in that of Bengel. Griesbach also leaves it out of the text. It is hard for thee, c.] σκληρονσοιπροςκεντραλακτιζειν. This is a proverbial expression, which exists, not only in substance, but even in so many words, both in the Greek and Latin writers. κεντρον, kentron, signifies an ox goad, a piece of pointed iron stuck in the end of a stick, with which the ox is urged on when drawing the plough. The origin of the proverb seems to have been this: sometimes it happens that a restive or stubborn ox kicks back against the goad, and thus wounds himself more deeply: hence it has become a proverb to signify the fruitlessness and absurdity of rebelling against lawful authority, and the getting into greater difficulties by endeavouring to avoid trifling sufferings. So the proverb, Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim. Out of the cauldron into the fire. "Out of bad into worse." The saying exists, almost in the apostolic form, in the following writers. EURIPIDES, in Bacch. ver. 793:- Θυοιμ' αναυτῳμαλλον, ηθυμουμενος Προςκεντραλακτιζοιμι, θνητοςων, Θεῳ. "I, who am a frail mortal, should rather sacrifice to him who is a GOD, than, by giving place to anger, kick against the goads." And AESCHYLUS, in Agamemnon, ver. 1633:- Προςκεντραμηλακτιζε. Kick not against the goads. And again in Prometh. Vinct. ver. 323:- Προςκεντρακωλονεκτενεις, ὁρωνὁτι Τραχυςμοναρχοςουδ' ὑπευθυνοςκρατει. "Thou stretchest out thy foot against goads, seeing the fierce monarch governs according to his own will." Resistance is of no use: the more thou dost rebel, the more keenly thou shalt suffer. See the Scholiast here. PINDAR has a similar expression, Pyth. ii. ver. 171-5 :- Φερεινδ' ελαφρως Επαυχενιονλαβοντα Ζυγονγ' αρηγει. Ποτικεντρονδετοι Λακτιζεμεν, τελεθει Ολισθηροςοιμος. "It is profitable to bear willingly the assumed yoke.

5. And he said, Who art thou, Lord?] Saul is sensible of the Divine nature of the vision, and shews this by his address. The appearance of Christ, though in a glorified body, must have been like that which He wore in His humanity, and since Saul does not recognize Jesus, we may almost certainly conclude that he had not known Him during His ministerial life.And the Lord said] The best texts have only “And he,” the verb “said” being understood.I am Jesus whom thou persecutest] In Acts 22:8 St Paul gives the fuller form of the sentence, “I am Jesus of Nazareth.” By using this name, the being whose Divine nature Saul has already acknowledged by calling him “Lord,” at once and for ever puts an end to Saul’s persecuting rage, for he is made to see, what his master Gamaliel had before suggested (Acts 5:39), that to persecute Jesus was to “fight against God.”it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 6. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him] These words have been inserted here in some MSS. for the sake of making in this place a complete narrative by the combination and adaptation of the additional particulars given in Acts 26:14 and Acts 22:10. It is easy to understand the desire which prompted such a combination. The best MSS. omit the words here, giving them where they more naturally find place, in the personal narratives of St Paul himself.

And he said, Who art thou, Lord? - The word “Lord” here, as is frequently the case in the New Testament, means no more than “sir,” John 4:19. It is evident that Saul did not as yet know that this was the Lord Jesus.

5. The pricks—The goad, or goad-points, with which oxen were stimulated and punished, and compelled to submit by their drivers. It was a proverb in antiquity used by AEschylus and other classic poets (as quoted by Dr.