Saul thought he was right to fight the name of Jesus; he "verily thought" he ought to do it (Acts 26:9). This question stopped him on the road. Jesus does not ask, "Why persecutest thou My people?" but "why persecutest thou me?" Barnes, commenting on the same words in Acts 9:4, says, "Christ and his people are one. To persecute them, therefore, was to persecute him." Calling him by name twice, Matthew Henry says, "would surprise and startle him." The question presses Saul to face what he is really doing and Whom he is really fighting.

Saul answered with a question of his own: "Who art thou, Lord?" The reply came: "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts 26:15). Jesus then told him to rise, for He had appeared "to make thee a minister and a witness" and was sending him to the Gentiles "to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light" (Acts 26:16-18). Paul tells Agrippa, "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision" (Acts 26:19).

Of the three accounts of this event in Acts, only this one says the voice spoke "in the Hebrew tongue" (Acts 26:14; compare Acts 9:4; Acts 22:7). The Greek is te Hebraidi dialekto, "in the Hebrew language."

"Pricks" translates kentra, goads. Barnes explains that the word commonly means "an ox-goad, a sharp piece of iron stuck into the end of a stick, with which the ox is urged on." The saying comes from "a stubborn and unyielding ox kicking against the goad." Gill calls it "a proverbial expression, taken from beasts that are goaded," who "hurt themselves the more thereby."

This is one of the clearest pictures in Scripture of how closely Jesus is joined to His people. To strike at them is to strike at Him. Gill writes that "the union between Christ and his people is so close, that what is done to them is done to him." Matthew Henry notes that Saul, trampling on people he thought were nothing, "was insulting one that was so much the glory of heaven."

The question also shows the mercy of Christ. He could have struck Saul down for good. Instead He asked him a question, told him he was only hurting himself, and then called him to carry light to the Gentiles (Acts 26:16-18). Barnes says the proverb describes a course of "resisting the authority of him who has a right to command... to the injury of him who makes the resistance." The goads were not meant to destroy Saul but to turn him.