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For my weekly quiet time this week, we will study Psalm 14 and its interpreters.
In vv 2-3, the Psalmist says that God looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if any sought after God, and he found that there was none that did good. Romans 3:10-11 appeals to this passage to argue that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, which is why everyone needs a savior, Jesus Christ. In this vein, Augustine has an intriguing interpretation of v 3. The Septuagint for the verse can be translated to mean that "There is none that does good, there is not up to one," and Augustine interprets "not up to one" as "except one," indicating that the verse is saying that there is only one man who does good. For Augustine, that one man is Christ. The Masoretic does not have "up to one," however, but rather "even one." But it's interesting how Augustine resembles the rabbis in that he sees importance in every single word of Scripture.
What amazed me, however, was how many interpreters tried to argue that Psalm 14:1-3 is not saying that every human being on the face of the earth is evil. I saw this among Jewish interpreters, some of whom related Psalm 14 to the Babylonians' conquest of Jerusalem, as a mass of Babylonians invaded Jerusalem, and not one nation protested against that atrocity, which is why, for according to this interpretation, the Psalmist is complaining about everyone being unrighteous. And, indeed, this Psalm does appear to have Israel's subjugation in exile in mind, for v 4 criticizes those who eat up God's people as they eat bread, and v 7 expresses hope that God will deliver Israel. So one view is that vv 1-3 is about the mass of Gentiles who are supporting Israel's subjugation, not universal depravity.
But even Christian interpreters have a problem asserting that Psalm 14 is speaking about all of humanity. The fourth century Christian thinker Theodore of Mopsuestia says that Psalm 14 is David's prophecy about Sennacherib's invasion of Judah and Jerusalem, as well as the later restoration of Israel under Cyrus. (Theodore says that Cyrus restored the ten tribes, and so, for him, they must not be lost anymore!) Theodore tends to go with the literal-historical interpretation of the text, and so he struggles to understand why Paul applies Psalm 14:2-3 to other people besides those whom the text is lambasting: the Assyrians. Theodore's answer is that Paul saw that people were behaving in the same wicked manner as the wicked Assyrians of Psalm 14, and so Paul applied the text to them as well.
John Owen was a seventeenth century English Puritan, and so you'd expect him to embrace the idea that Psalm 14 is talking about the depravity of all of humanity. But he interprets vv 2-3 to mean "all fools"---those who are identified as practical atheists in v 1, and who persecute God's people.
Jimmy Swaggart applies Psalm 14 to all of humanity, but another interpretation that he offers is that Psalm 14 is describing the state of the world after the rapture, when Christians have gone to heaven. At that point, it will feel as if everyone on the earth is wicked!
Because the view that Psalm 14 is describing wicked Gentile conquerors is so popular, I'll quote Peake's Commentary on the Bible, which says that vv 1-6 is describing "The cruelty and practical atheism of wicked Jews, for it was Jews, not heathen, who could be expected to 'seek after God'", which is what Psalm 14:2 is criticizing the godless for not doing. And that is one interpretation: to read Psalm 14 in light of the depravity of all of Israel in the Psalmist's day. We see elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible laments that the entire nation is becoming corrupt. In Psalm 12, the Psalmist is upset because the godly and faithful have ceased, and everyone is a deceiver. In prophetic passages such as Jeremiah 5-6 and Micah 7:1-7, a prophet says that everybody is corrupt, which is why the nation will be judged. Is Psalm 14 talking about every single human being on the face of the earth throughout history, or rather about the corruption of society in the Psalmist's day, and in a hyperbolic manner, at that?
There are two problems with applying Psalm 14 to every human being who ever lived. First of all, the shoe does not fit, for not everyone is an atheist who persecutes the poor. Augustine himself feels compelled to mention that not all of the bad people of Psalm 14 are people who say that "there is no God," in his attempt to apply parts of Psalm 14 to all of humanity, as Paul does. Augustine realizes that not all of the characteristics that are criticized in Psalm 14 apply to every human being on the face of the earth. After all, a number of people believe in God! (And, by the way, Augustine is baffled that anyone would not believe in God, for he says that even "certain sacrilegious and abominable philosophers, who entertain perverse and false notions of God" still believe that God exists! Augustine was not like a lot of interpreters, who refuse to take Psalm 14:1 at face-value. Many interpreters have said that v 1 does not indicate that the fool means God does not exist when he says that "there is no God," for everyone believed in the supernatural back then! Rather, the fool is behaving as if there is no God, for he does not think that God will punish him. But Augustine takes "There is no God" to mean that the fool actually believes that "there is no God," and he is puzzled, since he doesn't know anyone who is so bad as not to believe in some sort of god!)
Second, there are righteous people in Psalm 14, even though vv 1-3 say that there is none that does good. V 5 refers to the generation of the righteous. The wicked of Psalm 14 are persecuting others, which may imply that not everyone is in the "wicked" group, for there are people who are the wicked group's victims.
Peter Craigie says the following, however: "...whereas in the original psalm, there is a gap between the fool and the righteous, from a NT perspective the entire psalm may be read as a spiritual pilgrimage. The reader begins, standing where the fool stands, but as he continues to read he perceives and laments the nature of folly and its consequent evil. And, with the psalmist, he must pray for deliverance from that folly."
I think that it's good for me to ask myself to what extent I am like the fool of Psalm 14. In that sense, I'm open to Psalm 14 being applied to all of humanity. There's nothing wrong with introspection, for that can help me to do better things in my life. My problem is when the application of Psalm 14 to all of humanity is then taken to mean that all people are corrupt and worthless in the eyes of God, and that therefore God will put them in hell for all eternity to be tortured, if they don't embrace a particular religion. All people are flawed, but will God torture them for all of eternity because of that? I hope not.
