The meaning of the voice - Of the language that is uttered, or the sounds that are made.

I shall be unto him ... - What I say will be unintelligible to him, and what he says will be unintelligible to me. We cannot understand one another any more than people can who speak different languages.

A barbarian - See the note at Romans 1:14. The word means one who speaks a different, or a foreign language.

If I know not the meaning of the voice - Την δυναμιν της φωνης, The power and signification of the language.

I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian - I shall appear to him, and he to me, as a person who had no distinct and articulate sounds which can convey any kind of meaning. This observation is very natural: when we hear persons speaking in a language of which we know nothing, we wonder how they can understand each other, as, in their speech, there appears to us no regular distinction of sounds or words. For the meaning and origin of the word barbarian, see the note on Acts 28:2.

Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice,.... The force and power of a language, the signification of it, the ideas its words convey, but only hear the sound of it:

I shall be to him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me: like one of those rude and uncultivated people that inhabit deserts and wild places, who can neither understand the language of others, nor be understood by others; and indeed may be meant of any sort of people, that do not understand one another's language: the word "bar", and "bara", in the Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic languages, not only signifies a field, a wood, or desert place, but also without, or any thing extraneous; and being doubled, signifies one that lives without, in another land; a stranger, and that speaks a strange language; so all other nations of the world were barbarians to the Hebrews, and particularly the Egyptians; see the Targum on Psalm 114:1 and so were all other nations to the Greeks, see Romans 1:14 and also to the Romans: and the sense is, that where the signification of a language and the sense of words are not known, the speaker is like a man that lives in a strange country to him that hears him; and the hearer is like to one that lives in a strange country to him that speaks, since they cannot understand one another. The word sometimes is used for men, , (z), "that can neither speak nor hear", men dumb and deaf; and when words cannot be understood, the case is all one as with such persons.

(z) Scholia in Aristoph. in Avibus, p. 550.

Meaning (δύναμιν)

Lit., force.

Barbarian

Supposed to be originally a descriptive word of those who uttered harsh, rude accents - bar bar. Homer calls the Carians, βαρβαρόφωνοι barbar-voiced, harsh-speaking ("Illiad," 2, 867). Later, applied to all who did not speak Greek. Socrates, speaking of the way in which the Greeks divide up mankind, says: "Here they cut off the Hellenes as one species, and all the other species of mankind, which are innumerable and have no connection or common language, they include under the single name of barbarians" (Plato, "Statesman," 262). So Clytaemnestra of the captive Cassandra: "Like a swallow, endowed with an unintelligible barbaric voice" (Aeschylus, "Agamemnon," 1051). Prodicus in Plato's "Protagoras" says: "Simonides is twitting Pittacus with ignorance of the use of terms, which, in a Lesbian, who has been accustomed to speak in a barbarous language, is natural" (341). Aristophanes calls the birds barbarians because they sing inarticulately ("Birds," 199); and Sophocles calls a foreign land ἄγλωσσος without a tongue. "Neither Hellas nor a tongueless land" ("Trachiniae," 1060). Later, the word took the sense of outlandish or rude.

Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that {g} speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

(g) As the papists in all their sermons, and they that ambitiously pour out some Hebrew or Greek words in the pulpit before the unlearned people, by this to get themselves a name of vain learning.

14:11 If I know not the meaning of the voice. The language.

I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian. A foreigner, not understanding his language. The Greeks and Romans called all not of their races barbarians.

14:11 I shall be a barbarian to him - Shall seem to talk unintelligible gibberish.

11. Therefore-seeing that none is without meaning.

a barbarian-a foreigner (Ac 28:2). Not in the depreciatory sense as the term is now used, but one speaking a foreign language.

14:6-14 Even an apostle could not edify, unless he spoke so as to be understood by his hearers. To speak words that have no meaning to those who hear them, is but speaking into the air. That cannot answer the end of speaking, which has no meaning; in this case, speaker and hearers are barbarians to each other. All religious services should be so performed in Christian assemblies, that all may join in, and profit by them. Language plain and easy to be understood, is the most proper for public worship, and other religious exercises. Every true follower of Christ will rather desire to do good to others, than to get a name for learning or fine speaking.