1 Corinthians 14:21

“In the law it is written: With men of other tongues and lips of strangers will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me.”

The absurdity, the puerility of the preponderating use of tongues in the assemblies is demonstrated from this new point of view. Paul introduces the subject by quoting Isaiah 28:11-12. He calls the book of the prophets the law, as is sometimes done in the New Testament; comp. 1 Corinthians 14:34, and John 10:34. This wide meaning of the word law is due to the feeling that all the other parts of the Old Testament rest on the law, and themselves form law for believers.

This passage from Isaiah seems at the first glance to have no connection with the gift of tongues; for it applies in the prophetic context to foreign nations, particularly the Assyrians, by whose invading forces God will visit His people, after having sought in vain to bring them to Himself by the words of the prophets. It does not take long, however, in the closer study of the parallel, to understand its meaning. As to this rude and unintelligible language which, according to Isaiah, God will hold with His people, by giving them over to strange and cruel nations, it is the unbelief of His people, in the words of the prophets, which will force Him to use it; if the Israelites had listened to the prophets with faith, God would not have required to speak to them in strange tongues. So it is with glossolalia, says the apostle; this speaking in unintelligible tongues, which has suddenly sprung up in this new era of the kingdom of God, is the evidence of a separation on God's part, not certainly from those who speak in tongues, but from those to whom He thus speaks. The fact, indeed, proves that the intelligible revelation of God has not been received as it ought to have been. As is well said by Kling: “When God speaks intelligibly, it is to reveal [open] Himself to His people; when He speaks unintelligibly, it is because He must hide [close] Himself from them.” Pentecost will be cited as an objection, where the gift of tongues appears as a blessing of grace, not as a sign of the Divine displeasure. But, first of all, on that day interpretation accompanied tongues, and transformed them immediately into preaching; but especially speaking in tongues, as it broke forth on that day, had a wholly different signification for believers from that which it had for the mass of the Jewish people. In regard to Israel, which had rejected the preaching in good Hebrew which Jesus had addressed to it for three years, this strange phenomenon was a beginning of rupture, a certification of unbelief. God, while continuing to appeal to it, now addressed Himself to other nations; the people of God was on the eve of its rejection.

The apostle's text differs considerably from the translation of the LXX., which is altogether inaccurate; it also differs from the Hebrew text itself. It is a free reproduction, exactly corresponding, in the first part, to the meaning of the Hebrew, but differing from it sensibly in the last words. The Hebrew says: “And they would not hear;” which applies to the unbelief of the people in regard to the ancient prophetical revelations; while in Paul the words: and yet for all that will they not hear me, apply to the conduct of the unbelieving people in regard to the tongues themselves, as is proved by the: and yet for all that. The idea expressed by Paul is, therefore, that this new means, tongues, will fail as well as the former; in Isaiah, prophetical preaching; in Paul, evangelical preaching. How can we help thinking here of the persevering unbelief of Israel, even after Pentecost, an unbelief of which, after Palestine, the whole world, Greece itself, was at that moment the theatre? Paul does not mean that this plan will absolutely fail, and with all. Otherwise why should God still use it? But the use of such means supposes, not faith, but unbelief in those to whom it is applicable? What folly then, what puerility on the part of the Corinthians, to show a strong predilection for a sign of this kind in the worship of believers! It matters little whether we read ἑτέροις (other lips) with the Greco-Lats. and the Byz., or ἑτέρων (lips of others) with the Alex.

Applying the words of Isaiah, as he does here, Paul is led to the following conclusion: