Scroll

A scroll — a long sheet of papyrus or treated leather rolled around a rod and written in columns — was the book of the biblical world, the ordinary medium of permanent, authoritative writing. In Scripture the scroll is rarely a neutral object: it is overwhelmingly the vehicle of God's word, his law, his prophecy, and his decrees set down so they cannot be lost or revised at human whim. To handle a scroll in the Bible is usually to handle the word of the LORD.

The image carries this weight from the start. The rediscovery of the scroll of the law in the temple sparks Josiah's reformation, as the forgotten word confronts the nation afresh (2 Kings 22:8). Prophets are commissioned through scrolls: Ezekiel is told to eat a scroll covered with "words of lamentation and mourning and woe," and it becomes "as sweet as honey" in his mouth — the prophet must inwardly receive God's message before he can speak it (Ezekiel 3:1–3). Jeremiah dictates the LORD's words to a scroll that King Jehoiakim defiantly cuts up and burns, only for God to have it written again with more added — the word cannot be destroyed by burning it (Jeremiah 36:2; Jeremiah 36:27–28). The Psalter even reads the scroll as the place where the Messiah's obedience is foretold: "In the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will" (Psalm 40:7–8).

Jesus takes up a scroll to announce his ministry, unrolling Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue and declaring, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:17–21) — he is both the reader and the subject of the written word. In the Revelation the scroll becomes the very plan of God for history: a scroll sealed with seven seals that no one in heaven or earth can open, until the slain and risen Lamb is found worthy to take it and break its seals (Revelation 5:1–9). John, like Ezekiel, must eat a little scroll that is sweet in the mouth but bitter in the stomach, for God's word is both gift and burden (Revelation 10:9–10).

So the scroll testifies to a God who speaks and writes, whose word endures every attempt to silence it, and whose whole purpose for the world is unsealed at last by Christ. To receive the scroll is to take God's word into oneself and live by it.