I gotta have my orange juice.

On the face of it, it is easy to recognize that the purpose of the gift of tongues was to bring God’s kingdom, in the words of Revelation, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people. You can see this in Acts 2 mentioning “every nation under heaven” and in the fact that Pentecost is a mirror image of Babel. Instead of reversing Babel, Jesus subverts it, or in the words of Michael Heiser, “infiltrates” it; without destroying nations as such, he orchestrates to bring every nation and language under his rule.

There are a few less obvious ways in which Scripture highlights this. Michael Heiser points out that God is not simply bringing the gospel into every language, but also transferring every nation from the elementary principles and powers back to Jesus. In doing so, Luke presents a litany of nations that mirrors the exhaustive list of seventy nations of Genesis 10. Of course, it is “every nation,” but it is also structured from east to west just as it is in Genesis 10. And while Heiser does not call attention to this, Luke’s list covers a total of seventeen nations and people groups. This is significant because seventeen (10+7) is often a Biblical analog for seventy (10*7). The number seventeen is significant in the structure of the Psalms, and is the backdrop for the 153 fish of John 21, since 153 is the triangle of 17. This is another way of indicating that the purpose of the gift of tongues was to thoroughly distribute the wonderful works of God to every human language and nation.

Heiser also suggests that the word for “divided” in verse 3 is a significant allusion to this fact, since it can also be taken to mean “distributed.” The gifts of the kingdom are distributed to every language.