Was speaking in tongues done in the Old Testament? The reason I ask is that talking in tongues is nothing more speaking in a language not known to the user. I know it won’t be a critical or applicable statement, but didn’t even a donkey speak in tongues with Balaam? I know it says God opened the donkey’s mouth and all, but would that be speaking in tongues? That even a donkey spoke in tongues which is kind of funny. I won’t use it as an essential point, but I talking a year ago to a friend who says he speaks in tongues. I told my friend if you want to get into it, even a donkey spoke in another language. At the time he and I were discussing if sinful people can prophesy and can the Spirit come upon people to make them do things. (The answer was yes with Saul and his guys he sent after David plus Balaam and all. It shows that the Spirit can do what He wants.) My friend and I like to give each other a hard time with subjects we disagree about so I threw that out there as a joke, but I realized it might actually be considered talking in tongues.<\/p>\n\t
I had never considered it in that light, but yes, the donkey was speaking in a language which it did not know prior and wasn’t trained in. But there is much more going on since that particular miracle had to have raised the donkey’s intelligence quite a bit so it could reason with Balaam and there would have been modifications to its voice box to accommodate human speech.<\/p>\n
The first mention of speaking in tongues as a miraculous gift to humans is in Acts 2. Since it was unknown prior, Luke included a definition of what speaking in tongues meant. “And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?”<\/em>” (Acts 2:6-8). Being able to speak Russian to a Spaniard would not be impressive. In Acts 2 there were 15 different regions of the world mentioned. Each with its own native language and the apostles were able to converse with them in their own tongue.<\/p>\n The origin of languages, or tongues, is mentioned in Genesis 11:1-9. But the ability to speak to people in a language which you never studied is only mentioned in the New Testament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question: Was speaking in tongues done in the Old Testament? The reason I ask is that talking in tongues is nothing more speaking in a language not known to the user. I know it won’t be a critical or applicable statement, but didn’t even a donkey speak in tongues with Balaam? I know it says…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[700,142,141],"class_list":["post-10447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-balaam","tag-speaking-in-tongues","tag-tongue-speaking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10535,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/are-speaking-in-tongues-and-prophesying-similar-gifts\/","url_meta":{"origin":10447,"position":0},"title":"Are speaking in tongues and prophesying similar gifts?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: With talking in tongues, some of the time it says they talked in tongues and prophesied. Was that part of talking in tongues, or separate? I always get confused. I know in I Corinthians 14:22 mentions reasons for each, but I don't know if they are separate. Answer: Speaking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42096,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/am-i-denying-the-holy-spirit-by-questioning-whether-my-pastor-speaks-in-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":10447,"position":1},"title":"Am I denying the Holy Spirit by questioning whether my pastor speaks in tongues?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi, I was just reading your page on speaking in tongues. I'm trying to find an answer to my problem. I have been attending a church for the first time for the last eight weeks or so. The first time I attended at the end we praised Jesus and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34476,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/can-a-person-pray-in-a-tongue-and-not-know-what-they-are-saying\/","url_meta":{"origin":10447,"position":2},"title":"Can a person pray in a tongue and not know what they are saying?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hello! I was talking to someone about tongues, or the so-called 'tongues,' with a friend. She insists that people can say what they don't understand and referred to I Corinthians 14:14. This verse literally says one can pray using words they themselves don't understand. Please help me out. Thanks.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21101,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/i-wish-you-could-experience-speaking-in-tongues-first-hand\/","url_meta":{"origin":10447,"position":3},"title":"I wish you could experience speaking in tongues first-hand","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have been reading your sermons for years and using some of them in my own examples. I enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas on the Scriptures. The one thing that you are missing in the text about Speaking in Tongues is the experience of hearing it first hand\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90346,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/tongues-without-an-interpreter\/","url_meta":{"origin":10447,"position":4},"title":"Tongues Without an Interpreter","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Hugh DeLong The gift of being able to speak in languages that one had not previously known is called the gift of tongues. There are only five references to this: Mark 16:16-20; Acts 2; Acts 10; Acts 19; and the longest one in I Corinthians 12-14. That such was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1730,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/what-is-an-unknown-tongue\/","url_meta":{"origin":10447,"position":5},"title":"What is an unknown tongue?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Is unknown tongues a heavenly language or does it mean a language not known to people but for God? Answer: The phrase \"unknown tongue\" only appears in the King James Version in six places in I Corinthians 14. If you look carefully you will notice that in all six\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}