However, the tongue is always linguistic! It never means a glossolalic utterance unknown even to the language-speaker — nor an untranslatable utterance, and thus unknowable by the language-listeners!
Hodge on ‘praying in a tongue’ in I Cor. 14:14
Said Paul: ‘If I pray [in public] in a foreign language, my spirit indeed prays — but my understanding is unfruitful.’ On this ‘praying in a tongue’ Hodge comments: “The speaker with tongues should pray for the gift of interpretation. Unless he interprets — his prayer [in his own foreign language] can do no good” to others.
There must, then, be translation. Otherwise, continues Hodge — “as the same idea is expressed in vs. 16-17” (which see!) — “those who are unlearned, cannot join in…. ‘Praying’ with a tongue is specified, by way of example, as one mode of ‘speaking’ with tongues…. The general meaning of this verse, is thus plain.”
