1 Corinthians 14:21 - Exposition

In the Law. The quotation is from Isaiah 28:11 , Isaiah 28:12 , but the term "the Law" was applied generally to the Old Testament, as in John 10:34 ; John 12:34 ; John 15:25 ; Romans 3:19 ). With men of other tongues, etc. The application of this Old Testament quotation furnishes one of the many singular instances of quotation which prove that the Jews often referred to the words without any direct reference to their context or original meaning. He here wishes to show that glossolaly had little or no value except as an evidence to unbelievers, and illustrates this by Isaiah 28:11 , Isaiah 28:12 . Now, in that passage Isaiah tells the drunken priests, who scornfully imitated his style, that, since they derided God's message so delivered to them, God would address them in a very different way by the Assyrians, whose language they did not understand; and that even to this stern lesson, taught them by people of alien tongue, they would remain deaf. In the original, therefore, there is not the least allusion to any phenomenon resembling the "gift of tongues." But the mere words of a scriptural passage always came to Jews with all the force of an argument, independently of their primary meaning; and it was enough for St. Paul's purpose that in Isaiah the allusion is to unintelligible utterance, and to the fact that the teaching which it was meant to convey would be in vain. And other lips. St. Paul does not quote the LXX . The Hebrew has "with stammerings of lips and another tongue will he speak" (comp. Deuteronomy 28:49 ).