A One-Time Insight
In the Law it is written, “By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to Me,” says the Lord. 1 Corinthians 14:21 NASB
Strange tongues – The Greek term translated “strange tongues” (ἑτερογλώσσοις similar to ἑτερόγλωσσος) is a hapax legomenon, that is, it is found only one time in the whole Bible. Why does this matter? Maybe it’s only a spelling mistake. Paul’s scribe just put an extra letter in heteróglōssos. It happens, you know. If that’s the case, we can just dismiss this odd word. But what if it’s not a slip of the hand? What if Paul wants us to pay closer attention? What might we discover?
Paul uses this word in a Greek translation of a passage in Isaiah. “The only NT use is in 1 Cor. 14:21, where Paul applies Is. 28:11–12 (originally spoken of the Assyrians) in his teaching about the use of tongues in the community: As God will speak to Israel by the Assyrians, so he will give the sign of tongues to unbelievers. Paul offers us here an instructive example, paralleled in the rabbis, of his use of the OT.”[1] What we should notice is that the “tongues” are not unknown languages. They are merely “foreign” languages, like speaking Tagalog in a Presbyterian church in New England. Isaiah asserts that God will use speakers of a foreign language in His communication with Israel. This reference sets glōssos apart from the way the Greek mystery religions understood speaking in tongues. As we noted previously, Greek oracle religion included unknown (not foreign) language or sounds that needed a prophetes to interpret. That is not what Paul is suggesting in this reference to Isaiah. Greek oracle religions believed that the mind was absorbed in the overpowering god, producing uncontrolled sounds. These sounds appear to be a foreign language, but Paul demands that whatever they are, they must be used for the edification of the whole community, not the individual.
Since Paul is citing a recognized prophet with reference to glossolalia (or heteróglōssos), we also need to pay attention to Paul’s suggestion that prophecy is superior to this particular manifestation. In what way is prophecy superior? Remember that prophecy is not prediction. That idea is a much later Christian development. Prophecy is sympathy with God, being overwhelmed by God’s pathos about the world and His people. Prophecy is experiencing God’s heart. “The basic feature of pathos and the primary content of the prophet’s consciousness is a divine attentiveness and concern. Whatever message he appropriates, it reflects that awareness. It is a divine attentiveness to humanity, an involvement in history, a divine vision of the world in which the prophet shares and which he tries to convey. And it is God’s concern for man that is at the root of the prophet’s work to save the people.”[2] Prophecy in the biblical sense is superior because it is a direct manifestation of God’s concern for everything.
Maybe Paul’s amanuensis just made a mistake. But if he didn’t, then a Greek reader would pause and wonder why this word is different. That parallels the same kind of deliberate misspelling that happens in the Tanakh, misspellings that make the reader ask, “Why is this different?” The technique is a forced pause in the train of thought, a way to make the reader contemplate instead of rushing on. And maybe that’s what Paul had in mind.
Think about it.
Topical Index: heteróglōssos, foreign language, prophecy, 1 Corinthians 14:21
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 124). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 263.
