To the chief musician, a psalm of David
14
📚The fool has saidin his heart,
There is no God”.
They are corrupt,
they have done
abominable deeds.
There is no one who
does good.
14:1 Evidently this is a very important Psalm because it is repeated with only a few changes in Psalm 53, and Paul quotes from it in Romans chapter 3. The Hebrew word translated “fool” does not mean an uneducated person or one lacking in mental ability. It means one who is perverse in his thinking, one who because he is morally corrupt will not permit the truth to enter his head. The atheist is like this. He believes something (the non-existence of God) not because there is proof for it, but because there is hostility in his heart toward the God he denies (John 15:18; Rom 1:30; 8:7) – in other words, he allows his base feelings to rule his thoughts (Col 1:21). Atheism strikes a blow at ethics and morality (as someone has said, “If there is no God, I can do as I please”).
The atheist reveals his “foolishness” in other ways as well. He believes in the non-existence of God even though it is impossible to prove this, and though there is tremendous evidence against this view. In order to believe his atheism he must ignore all of this evidence, suppress the voice of God speaking in nature and in his conscience, and reject God’s revelation of Himself in the Bible which comes with great internal evidence of its truthfulness. Observe that the fool says inwardly that there is no God. Because of his circumstances, or the society in which he lives, he may not have the courage to deny God outwardly and may even profess to be religious.⚜
2 📚The LORD looked down
from heaven on the children
of men
to see if there were any
who understand and
seek God.
3 📚They have all turned aside,
they have all together
become corrupt.
There is no one who does good,
no, not one.
14:2-3 See Ps 53:2-3. David turns from thoughts of the corrupt nature of the atheist to thoughts of the corruption of human nature in general. Not all men will say there is no God, but because of their sinful nature they live to a large extent as if there were no God. If they really believed in God would they not try to seek Him? Would they not heartily try to do good? Since they do not, they show by their actions that their nature is corrupt and their belief in God for the most part is an empty thing. Paul used these verses to show the sinfulness and guilt of every human being – Rom 3:9-12.
Is this description of people too harsh and pessimistic? No. It is what God sees. Notice David’s words in v 2 – “The LORD looked down from heaven”. David could know this only by revelation from God Himself. People in their ignorance and darkness may think they see something very good in or among themselves. But God does not see as man does – 1 Sam 16:7; Luke 16:13. And in this psalm we have God’s view, not man’s.⚜
4 📚Are all the evildoers without
knowledge?
They devour my people like
they eat bread,
and do not call on the LORD.
5 📚There they are in great fear;
for God is among
the generation of
the righteous.
14:4-5 Those who practice evil have no understanding of the most essential thing in the world for them. The time will come when they will be overwhelmed with dread of God’s anger. Compare Rev 6:15-17. Notes on God’s anger at Ps 90:7-11; Num 25:3; Deut 4:25; John 3:36; Rom 1:18.⚜
6 📚You have shamed the counsel
of the poor,
because the LORD is
his refuge.
7 📚Oh, that the salvation of Israel
would come
out of Zion!
When the LORD brings back
his people from captivity 📖,
Jacob will rejoice, and
Israel will be glad.
14:6-7 In the midst of a corrupt humanity, God, the righteous One, is doing His work, bringing salvation to His chosen ones, justifying them and restoring them to a blessed state. \fp Note on the Hebrew language \fp Is it possible that the same Hebrew words can be translated so differently? Yes, it is. See also the note on Prov 19:22. Speaking in general, some words and expressions and phrases in Hebrew can have more than one meaning. Others are obscure and ambiguous, and it is very difficult to come at the exact meaning. Some sentences are very terse and omit words we would put in when using English, and so the meaning is doubtful. In other cases there are sometimes slight variations in the spelling of words in various manuscripts. \fp And we should understand that the Hebrew of the Old Testament is an ancient language, and in written form originally had only consonants – no vowels, no punctuation marks, and often no space between words. Many hundreds of years later a group of Jewish scholars added what they thought were the right vowels to the basic consonants. Their work is called the Masoretic Text, and it is the text used in the translation of the Old Testament for hundreds of years. No doubt they did their work remarkably accurately, but there is no reason to think that it was absolutely perfect. And if, here and there, they made mistakes in adding vowels, this can give meanings different from the ones the original writer intended. \fp We are very fortunate to have so ancient a book that on the whole is so remarkably clear as to meaning. We should understand that God fully inspired the original writings of the Bible (see notes at 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21). Though interpretations of those ancient manuscripts are not inspired in the same way as the originals, the translation used in this Study Bible is very accurate.⚜