Revelation 10:9,10

The prophet absorbs the word of God; in our phrase, he makes it his own or identifies himself with it (Jeremiah 15:16). To assimilate this revelation of the divine purpose seems to promise a delightful experience, but the bliss and security of the saints, he soon realises, involve severe trials (cf. Revelation 11:2; Revelation 12:13 f., etc.) for them as well as catastrophes for the world. Hence the feeling of disrelish with which he views his new vocation as a seer. The distasteful experience is put first, in Revelation 10:9, as being the unexpected element in the situation. (The omission of bitterness in LXX of Ezekiel 3:14 renders it unlikely that this additional trait of unpleasant taste is due, as Spitta thinks, to an erroneous combination of Ezekiel 3:2; Ezekiel 3:14). The natural order occurs in Revelation 10:10. The only analogous passage in early Christian literature is in the “Martyrdom of Perpetua” (4. cf. Weinel, 196, 197). Wetstein cites from Theophrastus the description of an Indian shrub οὗ ὁ καρπὸς … ἐσθιόμενος γλυκὺς. οὗτος ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ δηγμὸν ποιεῖ καὶ δυσεντερίαν. Before the happy consummation (Revelation 10:7), a bitter prelude is to come, which is the subject of national and political prophecies. In order to underline his divine commission for this task of punitive prediction, he recalls his inspiration.