Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Revelation · About this commentary
The Little Open Scroll
Revelation 10:1-4
1 I saw a mighty angel coming down out of the sky, clothed with a cloud. A rainbow was on his head. His face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. · WEB
A mighty angel wrapped in the covenant signs bestrides sea and land with an opened book, and one message is sealed in a book of unveilings.
I saw a mighty angel coming down out of the sky, clothed with a cloud. A rainbow was on his head. His face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.
Between the sixth and seventh trumpets, as between the sixth and seventh seals Revelation 7:1, the book opens an interlude — and this one is about the word of God and the people who must carry it. The descending angel wears the insignia of the divine presence itself: the cloud of the exodus, the rainbow of the covenant Revelation 4:3, the sun-face of the opening vision Revelation 1:16, and legs like the wilderness pillars of fire — the whole exodus-theophany assembled on one messenger. Whoever the angel is, what he carries comes from the throne with the covenant wrapped around it.
He had in his hand a little open book Revelation 10:2.
The adjectives are the message. Open — this scroll is not sealed; the word in view stands unrolled, readable, in hand. And little — against the great seven-sealed scroll of the throne room Revelation 5:1, a book small enough to eat Revelation 10:9. Daniel was commanded to seal his book even to the time of the end Daniel 12:4; here, in the age the trumpets have reached, a prophetic book stands open in an angel's hand — the sealed word's appointed unsealing, arrived. His stance claims the planet for it: his right foot on the sea, and his left on the land — the whole earth under the open book.
He cried with a loud voice, as a lion roars. When he cried, the seven thunders uttered their voices Revelation 10:3 — the lion-voice of the Lord who roars from on high Amos 3:8 Joel 3:16, answered by seven thunders speaking articulate things.
And then the book of unveilings does the one thing it never does elsewhere: I heard a voice from the sky saying, "Seal up the things which the seven thunders said, and don't write them" Revelation 10:4.
John heard the thunders and was forbidden to publish them. One message in Revelation is sealed — deliberately, permanently, its content known only to heaven and the seer. The restraint is itself revelation: the unveiling has edges God set; some things spoken are not given Deuteronomy 29:29, and every generation's appetite for a complete decoding of the end is denied here by the book's own precedent. What is open is the little book. What the thunders said is not ours — and the prophet who wrote everything else wrote that down instead.
held with reason What this mark means