Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth read a fake Bible quote from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction during a prayer service at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Discussing the Sandy 1 rescue mission of a downed pilot in Iran this month, Hegseth (as first flagged by A Public Witness, a religion-themed Substack) urged his audience to join him in a prayer, which he claims was delivered at the beginning of the mission.

“This prayer was recited by Sandy 1, which is one of the Sandies, to all Sandies, all those A-10 crews, prior to all CSAR missions, but especially this CSAR mission, which happened in real time,” Hegseth said. “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17.”

He continued:

So the prayer is CSAR 25:17 and it reads, and pray with me please, “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”

While the prayer didn’t sound very much like Ezekiel 25:17, which — in the King James Bible — simply 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,” it did bear a strong resemblance to a fake version of Ezekiel 25:17 quoted by the actor Samuel L. Jackson in Tarantino’s 1994 crime movie Pulp Fiction, just before his character shoots a man to death.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” says Jackson in the movie. “Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Tarantino himself poached the fake Bible verse from the 1970s Japanese martial arts movie Bodyguard Kiba.

Watch above via Defense Now.

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