What I Corinthians 14:14 really means
What does Paul really mean in I Cor. 14:14? We believe he means the following: ‘If I pray in public in a language well-known to myself but foreign to most of my listeners, my mind is unfruitful. For then my mind has not grasped that my listeners, who do not understand that foreign language I just prayed in, are deriving no benefit from my recent untranslated prayer. My mind is “unfruitful” in that it did not — while my spirit was praying — proceed to translate my own foreign words into the Corinthian dialect, for the benefit of my listeners.’
Note that Paul does not say: ‘If I pray in a tongue, even I do not understand it!’ But, as the famous Scottish Presbyterian Bible Translator Rev. Prof. Dr. James Moffatt rightly renders the phrase, Paul here actually meant: “If I pray with a tongue, my spirit prays, no doubt; but my mind is no use to anyone” — that is, to anyone else!
