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 rb, "bar", and arb, "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 Ps 114:1 and so were all other nations to the Greeks, see Ro 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, afwnoi h ankooi, , "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. Scholia in Aristoph.
in Avibus, p.