Bible Commentary - Psalms 14

This psalm is difficult to review.  It is a psalm of David, but if we just look at the first verse (as per tradition), this psalm does not easily fit into any of the categories I have described so far.  The first verse says, “The fool says in his heart, there is no God”.  If we consider psalms to be predominantly prayers for deliverance, or praise and thanksgiving to God, this doesn’t really fit into either category.  Overall, this psalm is probably closest to a prayer, but it’s not obviously so.

The only reason I can find to call this a prayer is verse 7, when David asks that “salvation for Israel would come out of Zion”.  The vast majority of this psalm is like a complaint about the wicked, which is consistent with the theme defined in v. 1.  Verses 1-4 are almost entirely focused on the behavior and thoughts of the wicked.  Perhaps the most important part is verse 3 when David says that everyone, in all of mankind, has turned to evil and become “corrupt”.

Broadly speaking, this is one of the core messages of the OT as a whole, and there are few places where it is stated more concisely than here.  In Genesis 3, we see that Adam sins and it brings death into the world.  This was the beginning of sin and death, or “corruption” to use David’s word.  However, that chapter alone does not show that all people forever will follow in Adam’s path and commit sins.  Instead, we see the universality of sin as an emerging theme in later books, especially (but not only) in Numbers, Judges and Kings.

In Numbers, we see Israel rebel against God over and over in the wilderness, culminating in God’s judgment that the entire generation of Israel should die in the wilderness, because they rebelled against him and refused to enter the promised land (Numbers 13-14).  In Judges, we saw what I called the “Judges cycle”, when Israel would get into sin and idolatry, God would sentence them to foreign domination, they would repent, and then God would send a “judge” to rescue them.  And it repeated over and over throughout the book.  Lastly, in Kings we see a steady progression of kings leading both Israel and Judah into sin and idolatry, with only a handful of righteous kings resisting the gradual tide sweeping them into first the Assyrian exile for Israel, and then later the Babylonian exile for Judah.

To summarize, the notion of universal sin is broadly demonstrated across the OT, especially in its depictions of Israel, who in spite of their chosen status, reject God repeatedly, rebel against him, commit idolatry, and follow sinful rulers.  The destruction of a whole generation in the wilderness is a stark reminder that the entire nation turned away from God, and these are the chosen people!  These are the ones who are supposed to be a light to the nations, the redeemed of God.  If the chosen people themselves would entirely turn away from God, how much more do the pagans and idolaters turn away from God?

In this psalm, perhaps we can get a sense of David’s frustration with both his own people as well as the wicked men from other nations that stand against him.  The language here really feels like complaining.  In verse 2 David says that God looks down from heaven to see if there are any good men, but this feels much more like David looking around to see if there are any good men and he obviously doesn’t like what he finds.

In the end, David’s prays for deliverance, but his prayer is forlorn and nearly despairing.  David looks for salvation to come from the LORD, but it’s clear that he feels overwhelmed by the darkness that he sees in the world.