Ezekiel 2:10 - Exposition

It was written within and without. Commonly such rolls, whether of vellum or papyrus, were written on one side only. This, like the tables of stone ( Exodus 32:15 ), was written, as a symbol of the fulness of its message, on both sides. And as he looked at the roll thus "spread before" him, he saw that it was no evangel, no glad tidings, that he had thus to identify with his work, but one from first to last of lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Jeremiah had been known as the prophet of weeping, and was about this time (probably a little later) writing his own Lamentations (the Hebrew title of the book, however, is simply its first words) over the fall of Jerusalem. Ezekiel's work was to be of a like nature. The word meets us again ( Ezekiel 19:1 , Ezekiel 19:14 ; Ezekiel 26:17 ; Ezekiel 27:2 , Ezekiel 27:32 ; Ezekiel 28:12 ; Ezekiel 32:2 , Ezekiel 32:16 ) as the keynote of his writings. Out of such a book, though the glad tidings were to come afterwards, his own prophetic work was to be evolved.