“Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll.”
“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”
John 6:53-56, Ezekiel 3:1-2
The prophetic roll delivered into the hands of Ezekiel, was necessarily much written with the dark forebodings of tribulation and sorrow. And as God’s representative at such a time, and to such a people, he must eat it (chap. iii. 1, 2), not, of course, literally, swallow the roll, but so receive and appropriate its unsavoury contents,
that these should infuse themselves, as it were, into his very moisture and blood, and imbue his soul with a feeling of their reality and importance.
Bitter indeed, because he had to announce a message and prosecute a work which was to be peculiarly painful and arduous; but sweet notwithstanding, because it was the Lord’s service in which he was to be engaged, and a service which had the full consent and approval of his own mind.
as Jeremiah also says, chap. xv. 16, “I found thy words, and ate them; and thy words were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of Hosts.”
“The action denotes that the prophet, being carried in a manner out of himself, entered into the room of God; and divesting himself of carnal affection, rising into the region of pure and spiritual contemplation, whatever the will of God might call him to do for magnifying the justice as well as goodness of God, he was thoroughly to approve in his own mind, and derive pleasure from the words of God, whatever might be the tenor of their announcements.” ¹
Patrick Fairbairn. Exposition of Ezekiel.
¹ Vitringa in Apoc., p. 441, on Chap.