1 Corinthians 14:21

In the law. Viz., Isaiah 28:11. As Chrysostom remarks, the law is sometimes used to denote, not merely the Pentateuch, but also the Prophets and the whole of the Old Testament.

It is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people. This is a difficult passage, and to understand it we must explain the passage in Isaiah cited by the Apostle. The prophet's meaning in vers. 9 and 10 is, that God is wont to teach knowledge and wisdom to those who have left childish delights and an immature age, and are men with the capacity for knowledge; but these Jews, who (ver. 7) take delight in the pleasures of wine and in drunkenness, are like children do not take solid food and are consequently unfitted for doctrine and true wisdom. Filled with wine, they scoff at me and at other prophets who denounce to them punishments from heaven for their drunkenness and other sins, and they say. "Precept must be upon precept, line upon line... here a little and there a little."

S. Jerome and Haymo point out that in this passage there is an ironical play upon words. Isaiah and other prophets were often saying, "Thus saith," or, "Thus ordereth the Lord." Hence the Jews, when drunken over their cups, would repeat in derision, "Order and order again" (precept upon precept), "Expect and expect again" (line upon line). It was as if they had said: "The prophets are always dinning into our ears, 'Thus saith the Lord,' and are always threatening or promising things which never come to pass, bidding us expect here a little and there a little, and nothing comes of it all." The same is oftentimes the experience of preachers, that the wicked ridicule, repeat, and sneer at their sermons and threatenings. Rabbi David, Rabbi Abraham, and after them Vatablus, Isidorus, Clarius, Pagninus, and Forterius give a very cold rendering to this verse (10) "precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little." The meaning then is: "These Jews are taught roughly and gradually line upon line, just as boys are taught their alphabet." But the following verses show that the prophet had in his mind scoffers and mockers, not untaught boys, for the punishments threatened are against scorners. S. Paul renders the sense of Isaiah and not the exact words: he applies the passage of Isaiah to the gift of tongues bestowed on the Apostles, who spoke with other tongues, not to scoff but to edify.

The sense then is: God, speaking by Isaiah, says: "My exhortation to repentance, given by Isaiah and other prophets, seemed to you, 0 Jews, troublesome and ridiculous, just as if I had spoken to you with inarticulate sounds or in a foreign tongue; hence you imitate what seem to you the meaningless sounds of the prophets, and you repeat in mockery their words. Wherefore, by the Chaldeans, who seem to you stammerers and lispers, will I punish you, that they, as the ministers of My righteousness, may restrain your unbelief by the strange sounds of their foreign tongue, and may ridicule you as their captives, and in their language mock and condemn your Hebrew words; and they shall serve as a type of the Apostles, whom in the time of Christ I will send to reprove your equal unbelief then, by the gift of unknown tongues, and they shall seem to you as men that lisp or speak indistinctly, and they shall be scoffed at by you and the wise of this world as foolish preachers of the Cross of Christ."

The literal meaning of Isaiah refers to his own time, and to the Chaldeans who were to overthrow Jerusalem; the allegorical refers to the gift of tongues given to the Apostles for a sign, not to the faithful but to unbelievers, of the malediction with which God punishes the incredulous, not of the benediction with which He teaches His own servants. This verse of S. Paul shows the sense of Isaiah. Cf. S. Jerome and Cyril on Isa. xxviii.