Q. When Ezekiel was called to be a prophet and he “went in bitterness and anger of spirit,” was he angry with God for what he had to do, or was he angry with his people for living contrary to God’s will?
It’s hard to tell the answer from the account of Ezekiel’s calling, which you’re asking about. God shows him a scroll with “words of lament and mourning and woe” written on both sides of it. God tells him to eat the scroll and “go and speak to the people of Israel.” Ezekiel says that the scroll “tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” God promises to protect him even if the people oppose his message, and then, Ezekiel reports, “The Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord on me.”
We could get the impression from this that Ezekiel was angry with God for forcing him to go on a mission on which he would have much opposition and little chance of success. (One translation says, “I went bitterly and angrily. I didn’t want to go. But God had me in his grip.”) On the other hand, Ezekiel could have been angry with his fellow Israelites at the thought that they would resist God and suffer for it. Either interpretation is possible.
Fortunately, in this case we get some help from another place in the Bible that seems to allude to this episode and comment on it. This other passage gives us the impression that Ezekiel was upset because of the content of the message he had to deliver to a nation that was unlikely to listen. In Revelation, when John is halfway through his vision, he is shown a little scroll and told, “Take it and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.” John eats the scroll and he finds that it is sweet in his mouth but bitter in his stomach. He is then told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.”
Most interpreters understand this to mean that it is sweet to speak the words of God, even when they are words of judgment and warning, but that it can be a bitter experience to see people suffer consequences that they’ve received fair warning about, especially since those people could have been spared and restored if they’d listened. If that is the meaning in Revelation, then it’s also the likely meaning in the passage in Ezekiel that Revelation is alluding to. So Ezekiel was probably not angry and bitter towards God. Rather, it was the stubbornness of his own people that made him so upset.
Good Question 