Volume 2

Tongues And The Old Testament

By K.D. Anderholm

"Who has made man's mouth?…Have not I, the LORD?" (Exod 4:11)

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From the very beginning, God has demonstrated His power over man’s mouth. When God created Adam and Eve, He made them in His own likeness and gave them the power of speech and communication. (Gen 2:19; 2:23) Adam and Eve didn’t have to go to school to learn how to speak, it was supernaturally imparted to them on the day they were created.

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In the garden of Eden, there was perfect communication between God and man. Because of the absence of sin, Adam and Eve were able to talk with God face to face and express themselves to Him with ease and fluidity. When mankind sinned, they were alienated from the presence of God and the intimacy of their face to face communication was cut-off. (Eph 4:18) Man’s heart was corrupted by sin and his ability to communicate was corrupted along with it. As a result, corrupt speech filled the earth. (Gen 4:23; 11:1-4; Mt 12:34; Eph 4:29)

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In order to maintain a degree of communication with mankind after the fall, God placed His Spirit upon certain individuals and enabled them to speak divinely on His behalf. Through the mouth of His prophets, God sent various warnings and messages to the people of the earth. (Jude 1:14-15; Gen 5:13; 20:7)

The Confusion of Tongues

In Genesis chapter eleven, we see that mankind had one language and one speech and they had united together in rebellion against God. In order to stop man’s rebellion, God displayed His power over man’s mouth once again. In verse one we read:

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Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Gen 11:1-9 (NKJ)

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Notice that God didn’t set up language schools throughout the earth and require man to attend them. This was a supernatural endowment. God created new tongues and dialects and empowered man to instantaneously speak and understand them.

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During this great judgment, the continents were divided and the Gentiles were separated into their lands and into their nations, everyone according to his language and according to their families. (Gen 10:5, 25) Linguistic experts today say that all languages can be traced back to one original language.1

 

God’s Anointing On Men’s Lips

Throughout the Old Testament, God raised up prophets from among the children of Israel and supernaturally empowered them to speak on His behalf. When the Holy Spirit fell upon them, they would prophesy and speak the utterances of God with great boldness. The Bible says that they were "…turned into another man." (1 Sam 10:6) The anointing of the Holy Spirit has always been the only true remedy for the problem of man’s wayward mouth. The prophet Isaiah discovered this truth when he was caught up into the third heaven.

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So I said: "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged."

Isa 6:5-7 (NKJ)

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The Prophets Speak of a Restored Language

The Prophet Zephaniah foretold a day when God would restore a "pure language" to the people of the earth. In Zeph 3:9 we read:

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"For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the LORD, to serve Him with one accord."

Zeph 3:9 (NKJ)

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The Prophet Joel also spoke of this event, only in greater detail. Joel described a world-wide outpouring that would enable men and women of every nationality to prophesy under the unction of the Holy Spirit of God.

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"And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy…"

Joel 2:28 (NKJ)

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Isaiah spoke of this outpouring as well, revealing that this event would not only include the ability to prophesy, but also the ability to speak with other tongues.

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For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

Isa 28:11-12 (KJV)

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Some have insisted that this reference in Isaiah is referring to the sound of an invading foreign army. That may have been the case in history, but we know that Isaiah was also referring to speaking in tongues because Paul quoted directly from this scripture while teaching the church at Corinth about the use of tongues. (1 Cor 14:21-22)

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The Old Testament Prophecies Are Still Only Partially Fulfilled

Each of these prophecies was partially fulfilled through the advent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. When Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two, he said, "This is THE BEGINNING of that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel." (AMP) The complete fulfillment of these prophecies are still unfolding today. Everywhere the Holy Spirit is moving throughout the earth, men and women are speaking in other tongues and prophesying. In fact, there are more people speaking in tongues today than at any time in history.

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Footnotes:

See: L. H. Gray, Introduction to Semitic Comparative Linguistics (1934); M. A. Bryan, Notes on the Distribution of the Semitic and Cushitic Languages of Africa (1947); Sabatine Moscati, ed., An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1964); J. H. Greenberg, The Languages of Africa (2d ed. 1966); De Lacy E. O'Leary, Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1923, repr. 1969); John J. McCarthy, Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology (1985); Geoffrey Khan, Studies in Semitic Syntax (1989); Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct; The Gift of Speech, Edinburgh (1991); William Chomsky, Hebrew: The Eternal Language (1957); D. J. Kamhi, Modern Hebrew (1982); Edward Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language (1984); Lewis Glinert, The Grammar of Modern Hebrew (1989). Yehuda N. Falk, Department of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel.