Psalm 53

Psalms 53:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David, Mahalath itself an unexplained term the commentators read variously as a tune name, an instrument, or a word for sickness or suffering, an honest unknown like Selah rather than a settled fact. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God opens the psalm exactly as Psalm 14 opens, this psalm's near twin, written mostly with God, Elohim, where Psalm 14 mostly writes the Lord, Yahweh, a pattern the commentators tie to Book Two of the Psalter's general preference for the divine name Elohim. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men answers the fool's private verdict with a search from above, corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity already naming the result before the search is described.

Psalms 53:3

Every one of them is gone back describes not one class of sinner but a universal defection, altogether become filthy repeating Psalm 14's own word for a curdled or spoiled thing. There is none that doeth good, no, not one closes the verse in the psalm's own bluntest terms, and Paul folds this very line into his case for universal sin at Romans 3:12, part of a larger chain of Old Testament citations built to leave no exception standing. The verse's force is cumulative rather than argued, every one, gone back, none, doubling down on the point rather than proving it.

Psalms 53:4

Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge turns from description to question, asking whether the corruption named in verse 3 is ignorance or something worse. Who eat up my people as they eat bread pictures oppression as a mealtime habit, casual and regular rather than occasional, the poor consumed the way bread is consumed without a second thought. They have not called upon God closes the verse where it began, the fool's practical atheism now shown in what he does rather than only in what he says.

Psalms 53:5

There were they in great fear, where no fear was describes a collapse into terror with no visible cause, a detail this psalm carries that its near twin at Psalm 14:5 does not. God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee is the verse's hardest line, and the commentators differ on whether it points to a specific deliverance in Israel's history or states a general principle of what happens to any power arrayed against God's people, without settling which. Thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them closes the verse where the fool's boast began, the despiser now himself despised.

Psalms 53:6

Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion turns the whole psalm into a single cry, the corruption of verses 1 through 5 answered not with an argument but with a longing for God to act. When God bringeth back the captivity of his people ties the hope to a repeated Old Testament pattern of national restoration after judgment, read by some as looking to the Babylonian exile and by others as a more general prayer for any reversal of the nation's fortunes. Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad closes the psalm on the two names of the one people, the patriarch's own name for himself and history and the name he was given standing side by side in the final line.