Acts 9:5

ὁ δέ instead of ὁ δὲ κύριος εἶπεν with ABC. Vulg. ‘et ille’ only.

5. εἶπεν δέ, Τίς εἶ, κύριε and he said, Who art thou, Lord? Saul is sensible of the divine nature of the vision, and shews this by his address. The appearance of Christ, though in a glorified body, must have been like that which He wore in His humanity, and since Saul does not recognize Jesus we may almost certainly conclude that he had not known Him in His ministerial life.

ὁ δέ, and he said. The verb is needed for the sense in English, but the Greek could dispense with it, as is done below in Acts 9:11. See also Acts 19:2.

ἐγώ εἰμι Ἰησοῦς, ὃν σὺ διώκεις, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. The emphatic contrast of the pronouns is to be noticed, though it cannot be represented in a translation. In Acts 22:8 St Paul gives the fuller form of the sentence, I am Jesus of Nazareth. The Lord speaking from heaven, and employing this His human name, at once and for ever puts an end to Saul’s rage and persecution. Him whom he must own as Lord is the same who was Jesus of Nazareth. Thus he sees, what his master Gamaliel had before suggested (Acts 5:39), that to persecute ‘the Way’ is ‘to fight against God.’