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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 14:3 - 14:3
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The third tristich bewails the condition in which He finds humanity. The universality of corruption is expressed in as strong terms as possible. הַכֹּל they all (lit., the totality); יַחְדּו with one another (lit., in its or their unions, i.e., universi); אֵין גַּם־אֶחָד not a single one who might form an exception. סָר (probably not 3 praet. but partic., which passes at once into the finite verb) signifies to depart, viz., from the ways of God, therefore to fall away (ἀποστάτης). נֶֽאֱלַח, as in Job 15:16, denotes the moral corruptness as a becoming sour, putrefaction, and suppuration. Instead of אֵין גַּם־אֶחָד, the lxx translates οὐκ ἔστιν ἕως ἑνός (as though it were עד־אחד, which is the more familiar form of expression). Paul quotes the first three verses of this Psalm (Rom 3:10-12) in order to show how the assertion, that Jews and heathen all are included under sin, is in accordance with the teaching of Scripture. What the psalmist says, applies primarily to Israel, his immediate neighbours, but at the same time to the heathen, as is self-evident. What is lamented is neither the pseudo-Israelitish corruption in particular, nor that of the heathen, but the universal corruption of man which prevails not less in Israel than in the heathen world. The citations of the apostle which follow his quotation of the Psalm, from τάφος ἀνεῳγμένος to ἀπέναντι τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν were early incorporated in the Psalm in the Κοινή of the lxx. They appear as an integral part of it in the Cod. Alex., in the Greco-Latin Psalterium Vernonense, and in the Syriac Psalterium Mediolanense. They are also found in Apollinaris' paraphrase of the Psalms as a later interpolation; the Cod. Vat. has them in the margin; and the words σύντπιμμα καὶ ταλαιπωρία ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς αὐτῶν have found admittance in the translation, which is more Rabbinical than Old Hebrew, מַזָּל רַע וּפֶגַע רַע בְּדַרְכֵיהֶם even in a Hebrew codex (Kennicott 649). Origen rightly excluded this apostolic Mosaic work of Old Testament testimonies from his text of the Psalm; and the true representation of the matter is to be found in Jerome, in the preface to the xvi. book of his commentary on Isaiah.
(Note: Cf. Plüschke's Monograph on the Milanese Psalterium Syriacum, 1835, p. 28-39.)