Overview
- At a Pentagon religious service, Pete Hegseth read a passage he presented as Ezekiel 25:17 and linked it to a combat rescue mission in Iran known by the call sign Sandy 1.
- The wording matched the stylized speech made famous by Samuel L. Jackson in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction rather than the biblical verse.
- The actual Ezekiel 25:17 is a brief statement about divine vengeance against the Philistines, not the extended phrasing Hegseth used.
- A Public Witness, a blog focused on religion and politics, first highlighted that the quoted text did not appear in the Bible.
- Later the same day, Hegseth invoked scripture again at a press conference and compared reporters to New Testament Pharisees while accusing the press of negative coverage of the war with Iran.