US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Sparks Controversy with Fictional Bible Quote

Pete Hegseth, the 29th United States Secretary of Defense, sparked widespread mockery and controversy on April 15, 2026, after reciting a fictional Bible verse drawn from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film "Pulp Fiction" during a religious service at the Pentagon. Hegseth delivered the prayer to honor a recent rescue mission that extracted a downed American pilot from Iran, presenting the text as a reference to the biblical verse Ezekiel 25:17. The passage he recited, however, closely matched the famous monologue delivered by actor Samuel L. Jackson in the film, including the phrase "I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger." The incident went viral within hours, with video clips of the service circulating widely across social media platforms alongside side-by-side comparisons with the original film scene.

Hegseth swapped "the Lord" for a military call sign Hegseth introduced the prayer as "CSAR 25:17," telling the assembled audience of high-ranking officers, military chaplains, Air Force airmen, and civilian employees that the designation referred to Combat Search and Rescue and was "a reference to Ezekiel 25:17." He then invited those present to recite the prayer with him. The text he delivered began: "The path of the downed airman is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men." In the film, Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules Winnfield opens the same passage with: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men." Hegseth adapted the ending of the passage to fit the military context, replacing the line "you will know my name is the Lord" with "you will know my call sign is Sandy 1" — a reference to the Sandy 1 rescue operation that had retrieved the pilot. The actual biblical verse Ezekiel 25:17 reads: "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them." The divergence between the scriptural text and what Hegseth recited was immediately apparent to those familiar with the film.

Pentagon calls it a deliberate reference, not a mistake A Pentagon spokesperson acknowledged the source of the text the day after the incident, stating that "this prayer was obviously inspired by dialogue from the film Pulp Fiction." The official statement added that both the prayer and the film dialogue were described as references to Ezekiel 25:17, as Hegseth had indicated during the ceremony, and accused those claiming the secretary made an error of "spreading false information and ignoring reality." Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell — a former governor of Alaska who served in that role from 2009 to 2014 — defended Hegseth on the social media platform X, publishing what one source described as "a detailed biblical exegesis" and asserting that media portrayals suggesting Hegseth did not know the verse was fictional constituted "Fake News." The defense drew its own criticism, given that Hegseth's wording during the service — inviting the audience to "pray with him" — framed the passage as a genuine prayer rather than a cinematic allusion. Late Night host Stephen Colbert commented that "Hegseth is quoting from the Gospel of Quentin Tarantino," according to reporting by NRC. The account "Republicans Against Trump," which describes itself as run by conservative Republicans opposed to Trumpism, published a direct comparison of the two texts on X.

Pulp Fiction co-writer weighs in with a measured response Roger Avary, the Canadian-American screenwriter who co-wrote "Pulp Fiction" with Tarantino and shared the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with him at the 67th Academy Awards, commented on the incident via the platform X. According to watson.ch, Avary wrote that he had "absolutely nothing against the Secretary of Defense quoting the film if it keeps bullets from hitting US soldiers." The watson.ch report also noted that the fictionalized passage did not originate with Tarantino and Avary's script, but traces back further to the 1973 Japanese martial arts film "Bodyguard Kiba," where the same passage was already incorrectly attributed to the prophet Ezekiel. The controversy added to existing scrutiny of Hegseth, who took office in 2025 and presents himself publicly as someone with deep biblical knowledge. The verse Ezekiel 25:17 became widely known in popular culture through its use in "Pulp Fiction," released in 1994, in which Samuel L. Jackson's character recites a modified version before shooting his victims. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, cementing its place as one of the defining works of 1990s American cinema. The passage's origins in the 1973 Japanese film "Bodyguard Kiba" — where it was already misattributed to Ezekiel — were noted by watson.ch in its coverage of the Pentagon incident. Neither Hegseth nor the Pentagon spokesperson addressed how the passage came to be included in the service or who provided the secretary with the text.