Scripture on ‘tongues’ in I Corinthians 14:21
Paul declared God had predicted He would speak to unbelievers through “other languages.” Here, the Apostle used the Greek word hetero-gloossois. The prediction Paul was referring to, is found in Isa. 28:11-12. That stated (in the third-century B.C. Greek Septuagint translation) that the Assyrians — while speaking their own language! — would speak to God’s covenant people through another tongue than that of the Israelites themselves. For: ‘dia gloossees heteras hoti laleesousion tooi laooi.’ Isa. 28:11 LXX.
There is a similarity in Ezk. 3:5-6, where the threefold reference to a “strange tongue” is indisputably to a then- spoken human language. There too, the Septuagint again translates this with the Greek word gloossa.
