4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, eating up my people [as] they eat bread? They call not upon Jehovah.
Pour out thy fury upon the nations that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name; for they have eaten up Jacob, yea, they have eaten him up and consumed him, and have laid waste his dwelling-place.
and there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; for thou hast hidden thy face from us, and hast caused us to melt away through our iniquities.
Hear this, ye that pant after the needy, even to cause to fail the poor of the land,
They know not, neither do they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are moved.
Because, knowing God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but fell into folly in their thoughts, and their heart without understanding was darkened: professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
This I say therefore, and testify in [the] Lord, that ye should no longer walk as [the rest of] the nations walk in [the] vanity of their mind, being darkened in understanding, estranged from the life of God by reason of the ignorance which is in them, by reason of the hardness of their hearts,
But if also our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those that are lost; in whom the god of this world has blinded the thoughts of the unbelieving, so that the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ, who is [the] image of God, should not shine forth [for them].
And according as they did not think good to have God in [their] knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to practise unseemly things;
Ye who hate the good, and love evil; who pluck off their skin from them, and their flesh from off their bones; and who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces as for the pot, and as flesh within the cauldron.
They are all hot as an oven, and devour their judges; all their kings are fallen: there is none among them that calleth unto me.
And none taketh it to heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire, and have also baked bread upon the coals thereof, I have roasted flesh, and eaten [it], and with the rest thereof shall I make an abomination? shall I bow down to a block of wood? He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
therefore, behold, I will proceed to do marvellously with this people, to do marvellously, even with wonder, and the wisdom of their wise [men] shall perish, and the understanding of their intelligent ones shall be hid.
Therefore my people are led away captive from lack of knowledge, and their nobility die of famine, and their multitude are parched with thirst.
Understand, ye brutish among the people; and ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 14
Commentary on Psalms 14 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 14
It does not appear upon what occasion this psalm was penned nor whether upon any particular occasion. Some say David penned it when Saul persecuted him; others, when Absalom rebelled against him. But they are mere conjectures, which have not certainty enough to warrant us to expound the psalm by them. The apostle, in quoting part of this psalm (Rom. 3:10, etc.) to prove that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin (v. 9) and that all the world is guilty before God (v. 19), leads us to understand it, in general, as a description of the depravity of human nature, the sinfulness of the sin we are conceived and born in, and the deplorable corruption of a great part of mankind, even of the world that lies in wickedness, 1 Jn. 5:19. But as in those psalms which are designed to discover our remedy in Christ there is commonly an allusion to David himself, yea, and some passages that are to be understood primarily of him (as in Psalm 2, 16, 22, and others), so in this psalm, which is designed to discover our wound by sin, there is an allusion to David's enemies and persecutors, and other oppressors of good men at that time, to whom some passages have an immediate reference. In all the psalms from the 3rd to this (except the 8th) David had been complaining of those that hated and persecuted him, insulted him and abused him; now here he traces all those bitter streams to the fountain, the general corruption of nature, and sees that not his enemies only, but all the children of men, were thus corrupted. Here is,
To the chief musician. A psalm of David.
Psa 14:1-3
If we apply our hearts as Solomon did (Eccl. 7:25) to search out the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness, these verses will assist us in the search and will show us that sin is exceedingly sinful. Sin is the disease of mankind, and it appears here to be malignant and epidemic.
In singing this let us lament the corruption of our own nature, and see what need we have of the grace of God; and, since that which is born of the flesh is flesh, let us not marvel that we are told we must be born again.
Psa 14:4-7
In these verses the psalmist endeavours,