Homilist Psalm 81:5 This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood not. It is by no means uncommon for men to be thrown into a community of whose language they are entirely ignorant. Now, ignorance of the language of others is of two kinds, intellectual and moral. I. INTELLECTUAL. By this we mean entire unacquaintance with the sounds, construction, and laws of the language. This kind of ignorance reminds us of two things. 1. An abnormal condition of human society. It is natural to suppose that He who made us all of one flesh, endowed us all with social natures, and united us all to each other with tender relationships, such as parents, children, brethren, would have furnished us with a language which all could understand, and through which we could all receive and communicate the thoughts and feelings of each other. Instead of this, hundreds of languages abound, thus creating social divisions amongst the race almost innumerable. Now the Bible directs us to an event which shows that this variety of language is not an original state of things (Genesis 11:1-9). 2. An enormous social inconvenience. The race, which should have been one harmonious whole, is split, through these many languages, into hostile sections, and become inaccessible to one another. "Languages shall cease." II. MORAL. Through the moral dissimilarity that exists amongst men it often happens that those who speak the very same language misunderstand one another. Put a pure Christly-minded man into the society of gamblers, mercantile speculators, and daring infidels, and he will say, "I heard a language that I understood not." The words honour, virtue, courage, love, justice, liberty, pleasure, happiness, which he might hear in these circles will not convey to him the ideas which they employed them to express. Again: imagine a thoroughly worldly and corrupt spirit transported into the heavenly regions, where all employ the language in which he was brought up, his vernacular, would he understand it? No; if he returned, he would say, "I heard a language that I understood not." Thus, wherever we go, we are constantly hearing a language we understand not. The lesson is — 1. We must get Christ's Spirit in order to understand His words. We cannot reach their deep, fathomless meaning without it. 2. That we should be thankful to the great Father for not making our destiny to depend upon the right interpretation of a language. "He that believeth on me," etc. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood not. |
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