1 The fool says in his heart, There is no God; They corrupt; they make abominable their doings; There is no one doing good.
2 Jehovah looketh down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there is any having discernment, Seeking after God.
3 They are all turned aside: together they are become putrid; There is no one doing good, There is not even one.
4 Do they not know, all the workers of iniquity, Who devour my people [as] they devour bread? On Jehovah they do not call.
5 There they feared a [great] fear, For God is in the righteous generation.
6 The counsel of the afflicted ye would put to shame, For God is his refuge.
7 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When Jehovah brings back the captivity of His people, May Jacob exult, may Israel be glad!
This psalm springs from the same situation as Psalms x. and xii. It has several points of likeness to both. It resembles the former in its attribution to "the fool" of the heart-speech, "There is no God," and the latter in its use of the phrases "sons of men" and "generation" as ethical terms and in its thought of a Divine interference as the source of safety for the righteous. We have thus three psalms closely connected, but separated from each other by Psalms xi. and xiii. Now it is observable that these three have no personal references, and that the two which part them have. It would appear that the five are arranged on the principle of alternating a general complaint of the evil of the times with a more personal pleading of an individual sufferer. It is also noticeable that these five psalms--a little group of wailing and sighs--are marked off from the cognate psalms iii.-vii. and xvi., xvii., by two (Psalms viii. and xv.) in an entirely different tone. A second recast of this psalm appears in the Elohistic Book (Psalm liii.), the characteristics of which will be dealt with there. This is probably the original.
The structure of the psalm is simple, but is not carried out completely. It should consist of seven verses each having three clauses, and so having stamped on it the sacred numbers 3 and 7, but vv. 5 and 6 each want a clause, and are the more vehement from their brevity.
The heavy fact of wide-spread corruption presses on the psalmist, and starts a train of thought which begins with a sad picture of the deluge of evil, rises to a vision of God's judgment of and on it, triumphs in the prospect of the sudden panic which shall shake the souls of the "workers of iniquity" when they see that God is with the righteous, and ends with a sigh for the coming of that time. The staple of the poem is but the familiar contrast of a corrupt world and a righteous God who judges, but it is cast into very dramatic and vivid form here.
We listen first (ver. 1) to the psalmist's judgment of his generation. Probably it was very unlike the rosy hues in which a heart less in contact with God and the unseen would have painted the condition of things. Eras of great culture and material prosperity may have a very seamy side, which eyes accustomed to the light of God cannot fail to see. The root of the evil lay, as the psalmist believed, in a practical denial of God; and whoever thus denied Him was "a fool." It does not need formulated atheism in order to say in one's heart, "There is no God." Practical denial or neglect of His working in the world, rather than a creed of negation, is in the psalmist's mind. In effect, we say that there is no God when we shut Him up in a far-off heaven, and never think of Him as concerned in our affairs. To strip Him of His justice and rob Him of His control is the part of a fool. For the Biblical conception of folly is moral perversity rather than intellectual feebleness, and whoever is morally and religiously wrong cannot be in reality intellectually right.