Ezekiel 2:10

He spread it before me. — The roll was given to the prophet open, as the book in Revelation 10:8, that he might first see it all as a whole, before becoming thoroughly possessed with it in detail. What he saw was “lamentations, and mourning, and woe;” in other words, this was the whole character of the message he was commissioned to bear until the great judgment in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple should be fulfilled, when, after Ezekiel 33, his prophecies assume a consolatory character. (See Introduction, VI)