Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

Psalm 14

Denunciation of Godlessness

To the leader. Of David.

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”

They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;

there is no one who does good.

The L ord looks down from heaven on humankind

to see if there are any who are wise,

who seek after God.

They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse;

there is no one who does good,

no, not one.

Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers

who eat up my people as they eat bread,

and do not call upon the L ord?

There they shall be in great terror,

for God is with the company of the righteous.

You would confound the plans of the poor,

but the L ord is their refuge.

O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!

When the L ord restores the fortunes of his people,

Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

6. Ye deride the counsel of the poor. He inveighs against those giants who mock at the faithful for their simplicity, in calmly expecting, in their distresses, that God will show himself to be their deliverer. And, certainly, nothing seems more irrational to the flesh than to betake ourselves to God when yet he does not relieve us from our calamities; and the reason is, because the flesh judges of God only according to what it presently beholds of his grace. Whenever, therefore, unbelievers see the children of God overwhelmed with calamities, they reproach them for their groundless confidence, as it appears to them to be, and with sarcastic jeers laugh at the assured hope with which they rely upon God, from whom, notwithstanding, they receive no sensible aid. David, therefore, defies and derides this insolence of the wicked, and threatens that their mockery of the poor and the wretched, and their charging them with folly in depending upon the protection of God, and not sinking under their calamities, will be the cause of their destruction. At the same time, he teaches them that there is no resolution to which we can come which is better advised than the resolution to depend upon God, and that to repose on his salvation, and on the assistance which he hath promised us, even although we may be surrounded with calamities, is the highest wisdom.