“It is hard for you to kick against the goads”
We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice say to me in Hebrew, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.' (Acts 26:14 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An obscure agricultural threat.
The cultural key
The goad is the ox-driver's spiked stick; an ox that kicks back against it only drives the point deeper. 'To kick against the goads' was a well-worn Greek proverb for futile resistance to a god's will, on the lips of Euripides' Dionysus and in Aeschylus and Pindar. The delicious detail: Paul says the voice spoke 'in the Hebrew language,' yet what it speaks is a Greek stage proverb. The risen Jesus addresses the bicultural man in both his registers at once, and only this retelling, before the Hellenistic king Agrippa, includes the line.
Recovered meaning
The Damascus road summarized as animal husbandry: Saul has been the ox fighting its driver, and every kick, every arrested disciple, has only driven the goad deeper. Resistance was already hurting him before the light stopped him.