1 Corinthians 14:21 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

In the law it is written The law here signifies the whole Jewish Scriptures. The passage quoted is taken from Isaiah 28:11, (where see the note.) With stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. And so he did: he spake terribly to them by the Babylonians, (whose language, strange and unintelligible to the Jews, is here referred to,) when they had set at naught what he had spoken by the prophets, who used their own language. Some critics have observed, that the Hebrew words in this passage of Isaiah, ought to be translated, in labiis irrisionis, with mocking lips; in which sense the LXX. understood the phrase, rendering it, δια φαυλισμον χειλεων. But that translation makes no alteration in the meaning; for they who speak to others in an unknown language, seem to the persons to whom they speak, to stammer and to mock them. The same thing is predicted, Deuteronomy 28:49, and Jeremiah 5:15; where see the notes. According to Diodati the meaning is, “Because they would not attend to plain messages, God would speak to them by such as they could not understand;” and which they would hate to hear: and then the apostle's argument will be, “Since God threatens this as a curse, do not voluntarily bring it upon the church, merely to make ostentation of your own gifts.” Isaiah's words, however, may be considered as an intimation of the purpose God had of sending one last message to them by his servants, endued with the gift of tongues. This, according to Macknight, is the primary meaning of the prophet's words. “Isaiah evidently foretels,” says he, “the methods which God, in future times, would use for converting the unbelieving Jews; and among others, that he would speak to them in foreign languages, that is, in the languages of the nations among whom they were dispersed. The passage, therefore, is a prediction of the gift of speaking foreign languages, to be bestowed on the first preachers of the gospel.” The prophecy thus understood had its accomplishment at the day of pentecost. Yet for all that Though I shall do this extraordinary thing to awaken, convince, and alarm them; they will not hear me They will not hearken and obey me. This the Lord foresaw, and foretold repeatedly by Moses and the prophets.