The command given to John in Revelation 10:9b, “Take it, and eat it, it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth,” is one of the most vividly visceral metaphors in the Bible. While it’s tempting to interpret it through the lens of daily life—where every pleasure may have a hidden cost, or where temporary joy eventually gives way to reality, the context points elsewhere.
Today’s verse reminds me of my high school football coach who used to say, “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet!” We thought he was talking about losing games, who knew he was a biblical scholar? We certainly didn’t. But I digress.
The initial sweetness of the scroll in today’s verse, likened to honey, represents the immediate joy, privilege, and personal confirmation that comes from receiving direct revelation from God. To be entrusted with a divine message, to hold the secrets of God’s plan, is an exhilarating and nourishing experience. The word of God, the logos, is intrinsically sweet and desirable.
However, once the message is internalized—once it moves from the mouth to the stomach—it turns bitter. This bitterness is not a punishment, but a reaction to the content of the message, which often involves delivering uncomfortable truths. In Revelation, the message is one of divine judgment, warning, and the ultimate struggle between good and evil. For the prophet, internalizing the full scope of human sin and the coming hardships is a painful, gut-wrenching experience.
The passage echoes the prophet Ezekiel, who was also commanded to eat a scroll that was “as sweet as honey” in his mouth, but contained “lamentations and mourning and woe.” This shared literary tradition confirms that the message is not about fleeting personal pleasures or an upset stomach. It is about the dual burden of the divine calling: the joy of revelation combined with the grief and pain of conveying a harsh reality to the world.
The passage reminds us that the word of God, while life-giving, is not always comforting.
The bitter-sweet scroll is a metaphor for the cost of discipleship and bearing witness. The call to ministry or prophecy involves an internal tension. It requires the spiritual leader to personally exult in the goodness and power of God (the sweetness) while simultaneously carrying the deep-seated burden of the world’s condition and the severity of God’s justice (the bitterness). This tension ensures that the messenger remains grounded—never so sweet as to ignore sin, and never so bitter as to forget the promise.
It transforms the hearer from a mere reader of a comforting word into a bearer of difficult, world-changing truth.
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