A "verse I never saw": "It is hard for you to kick against the prick"

Marcus Grodi, of the Coming Home Network and EWTN’s “Journey Home” program, has a list called “The Verses I never saw“, meaning the biblical verses he never noticed prior to his journey into the Catholic Church. Today I found my own “Verse I never saw”.

I occasionally visit Mild Colonial Boy’s blog, as I did today, and was surprised to find that it has been renamed “Kicking against the pricks”. That’s a bit rude, I thought, and then saw in his header this quotation from Acts 26:14 (KJV): “I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

What, I thought? That’s not how I remember it. But sure enough, that is what it says. There is an explanation of the phrase here.

I still think it sounds a bit rude. Perhaps that is what the Mild Colonial Boy intended.

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7 Responses to A "verse I never saw": "It is hard for you to kick against the prick"

  1. Tony Bartel says:

    If you did not know the allusion, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a quotation from Paul Keating (or Mark Latham).

  2. Peter says:

    I was brought up on the translation “Kick against the goads” which I always thought meant something about kicking goats!

    In defence of the Lutherans, it was our beloved Greek (and Latin) lecturer who first taught me what this phrase means. Kicking against “the goads” is possibly less open to missinterpretation. Although, perhaps most of the interpretations of “prick” are applicable in any case? ;)

  3. Mild Colonial Boy, Esq. says:

    Perhaps I should have chosen the motto for the Order of the Garter –
    “Honi soit qui mal y pense”.

    The motto is Old French for “shame upon him who thinks evil of it”

  4. Schütz says:

    Thank you for that. I always wondered what that motto meant. And what language it was in.

  5. LYL says:

    cool post!

  6. Anonymous says:

    It is actually honi soit mal y pense. Motto of the Order of Knights of the Garter (Doggone those Normans). The order came into being, the story is, when a lady lost hers while in company. To save her embarrasment, a knight picked it up and wore it as a sign of the lady’s favor. I can’t out how that was going to save her embarrasment exactly, and I was there, too!

    Gina

  7. Anonymous says:

    Oops!!! Honi soit mal qui mal y panse. Ancient senior moment.

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