Ezekiel 2:8 - Exposition

Be not thou rebellious, etc. The words convey a warning against the prophet's natural weakness. Instinctively he shrank, as Moses had done ( Exodus 3:11 ; Exodus 4:10-13 ) and Isaiah ( Isaiah 6:5 ) and Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 1:6 ), from his dread vocation of being a "mortal vessel of the Divine Word." In so shrinking he would identify himself with the very "rebellion" which he was sent to reprove, and would incur its punishment. Eat that I give thee. As in the parallel of Revelation 10:9 , the words imply that what was to be given him was no message resting, as it were, on the surface of the soul. It was to enter into the prophet's innermost life, to be the food and nourishment of his soul; to be, in our familiar phrase, "inwardly digested" and incorporated with his very flesh and blood. He was to live "not by bread only" ( Deuteronomy 6:3 ), but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of Jehovah.