What Does Acts 9:4 Mean?

(4) **Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?**—It is remarkable that here only, in the original Greek, and in Acts 9:17, as in the reproduction of the words in Acts 22:27; Acts 26:14, do we find the Hebrew form of the Benjamite name. It is as though he, who gloried in being above all things a Hebrew of the Hebrews, heard himself claimed as such by Him who spoke from heaven, called as Samuel had been called of old (1Samuel 3:4-8), and having to decide whether he would resist to the end, or yield, saying with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.” The narrative implies that the persecutor saw the form of the Son of Man as well as heard His voice, and to that visible presence the Apostle afterwards refers as a witness to him of the Resurrection (1Corinthians 9:1; 1Corinthians 15:8). If we ask as to the manner of the appearance, it is natural to think of it as being such as had met the gaze of Stephen. The martyr’s words, “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56), had then seemed to the fiery zeal of the Pharisee as those of a blasphemer. Now he too saw the Son of Man in the glory of the Father stretching forth His hand, not now, as He then had done, to receive the servant who was faithful even unto death, but, in answer to that servant’s dying prayer, to transform the persecutor into the likeness of his victim.