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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 10:8-10, take it and eat it
John's eating of the little scroll replays Ezekiel's call, where the prophet eats a scroll sweet as honey, and adds a bitter stomach that Ezekiel and Jeremiah also knew.
Revelation 10:8-10, in every translation this tool compares.
A new reporter learns the job by reading the whole file before writing a word. Ezekiel saw a hand holding a scroll. God told him to eat it, and in his mouth it was sweet as honey. Then he went out to speak hard words. John takes the little scroll the angel holds and eats it. It tastes sweet, then turns bitter inside him.
Eating a scroll from a heavenly hand. Ezekiel 3:3 in Greek has it in my mouth as honey, sweet (hos meli glykazon); John has sweet as honey (glyky hos meli). Ezekiel 3:1 has eat (kataphage), the command John hears. Ezekiel's belly (koilia) is filled; John's belly turns bitter.
Ezekiel's scroll was written with lament and woe, yet tasted sweet. John adds bitterness in the stomach. Beale says it is not new: Ezekiel went away bitter (Ezekiel 3:14), and in Jeremiah 15:16-17 God's eaten words gave joy and then filled him with bitterness in the Greek. Ezekiel is sent to Israel; John to many peoples and kings. John's scroll is a little one.
Eating the scroll means taking God's message in whole before speaking it. The sweetness is God's good word; the bitterness is the judgment it holds and the grief of watching people refuse it. Beale says John, like Ezekiel, is being commissioned again as a prophet. Wright: the prophet can speak God's word only when it has become part of his own life.
Not a sign that John fell ill. The bitterness, Beale says, is John's anguish at the judgment he must announce.
Beale says the precise reference is clearly to Ezekiel 2:8-3:3: both prophets are told to take and eat a scroll, and for both it is sweet as honey in the mouth. Ezekiel's scroll held lament, mourning and woe (2:10), and he went away bitter (3:14). In Jeremiah 15:16-17 the prophet eats God's words, finds joy, and is filled with anger, which the Septuagint renders pikria, bitterness, the noun of John's verb pikraino. The vault's Septuagint confirms pikrias eneplesthen in Jeremiah 15:17, where the Hebrew has zaam, indignation. The Hebrew of Ezekiel 3:14 has mar, bitter, but the vault's Septuagint of 3:14 lacks it; so John's bitterness agrees with the Hebrew of Ezekiel and the Greek of Jeremiah, a point drawn here. Keener says the account is based on Ezekiel 2:8-3:3, and the ESV Study Bible, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible agree. Walton says the eaten scroll belongs to Ezekiel's call: the words must be internalized. The grade is drawn here by Beale's definitions: the act and the honey are nearly identical and could come from nowhere else.
Heiser says the eating of the scroll and the honey are right out of Ezekiel. He reads Beale and McDonough on Ezekiel 2:8-3:3, on Ezekiel's bitter response in 3:14, and on Jeremiah 15:16-17, where the Greek has bitterness for anger. His own point: God gave Ezekiel the scroll and God gave Jeremiah the words, and here the mighty angel gives the scroll to John. That, he says, is one more sign that the angel is divine.
Is the little scroll the scroll of chapter 5? Bauckham argues they are the same book, as Beale reports. Beale grants a close link but holds that the diminutive biblaridion marks a smaller scroll for the church's task. In the Revelation 5 lecture Heiser reads a commentator who thinks the two are unlikely to be the same. Wright thinks they are one reality, and the CSB Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible leave both options open. MacArthur takes the little scroll to be the seven-sealed scroll of chapter 5, the title deed to the earth, now opened in full.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 10:2, 10:8 and 10:9-10
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 10:8-11
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 10:8-11
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 10:10
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, notes on Revelation 10:2 and 10:9
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Revelation 10:2 and 10:8-11
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 10:1-11
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Ezekiel 3:1-3
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 2:9-3:3, Ezekiel 3:14 and Jeremiah 15:16-17, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew text of Ezekiel 3:14 and Jeremiah 15:17, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 10:8-10
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 10: The Mighty Angel and the Little Scroll, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 5: The Scroll and the Lamb Who Is Worthy, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 10:2
