Acts 9:4-5

9:4 He ¹  fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, ²  why are you persecuting me?” ³  9:5 So he said, “Who are you, Lord?” He replied, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting!

Acts 22:7-9

22:7 Then I ⁴  fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ 22:8 I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ 22:9 Those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand ⁵  the voice of the one who was speaking to me.

¹ tn Grk “and he.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun.

² tn The double vocative suggests emotion.

³ sn Persecuting me. To persecute the church is to persecute Jesus.

⁴ tn This is a continuation of the same sentence in Greek using the connective τέ (te), but due to the length and complexity of the Greek sentence a new sentence was begun in the translation here. To indicate the logical sequence for the modern English reader, τέ was translated as “then.”

⁵ tn Grk “did not hear” (but see Acts 9:7). BDAG 38 s.v. ἀκούω 7 has “W. acc. τὸν νόμον understand the law Gal 4:21; perh. Ac 22:9; 26:14…belong here.” If the word has this sense here, then a metonymy is present, since the lack of effect is put for a failure to appreciate what was heard.