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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 14:4 - 14:4
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Thus utterly cheerless is the issue of the divine scrutiny. It ought at least to have been different in Israel, the nation of the positive revelation. But even there wickedness prevails and makes God's purpose of mercy of none effect. The divine outburst of indignation which the psalmist hears here, is applicable to the sinners in Israel. Also in Isa 3:13-15 the Judge of the world addresses Himself to the heads of Israel in particular. This one feature of the Psalm before us is raised to the consistency of a special prophetic picture in the Psalm of Asaph, Psa 82:1-8. That which is here clothed in the form of a question, הֲלֹא יָֽדִעוּ, is reversed into an assertion in Psa 82:5 of that Psalm. It is not to be translated: will they not have to feel (which ought to be יֵֽדְעוּ); but also not as Hupfeld renders it: have they not experienced. “Not to know” is intended to be used as absolutely in the signification non sapere, and consequently insipientem esse, as it is in Psa 82:5; Psa 73:22; Psa 92:7; Isa 44:18, cf. 9, Isa 45:20, and frequently. The perfect is to be judged after the analogy of novisse (Ges. §126, 3), therefore it is to be rendered: have they attained to no knowledge, are they devoid of all knowledge, and therefore like the brutes, yea, according to Isa 1:2-3 even worse than the brutes, all the workers of iniquity? The two clauses which follow are, logically at least, attributive clauses. The subordination of אָֽכְלוּ לֶחֶם to the participle as a circumstantial clause in the sense of כֶּאֱכֹל לֶחֶם is syntactically inadmissible; neither can אכלו לחם, with Hupfeld, be understood of a brutish and secure passing away of life; for, as Olshausen, rightly observes אָכַל לֶחֶם does not signify to feast and carouse, but simply to eat, take a meal. Hengstenberg correctly translates it “who eating my people, eat bread,” i.e., who think that they are not doing anything more sinful, - indeed rather what is justifiable, irreproachable and lawful to them, - than when they are eating bread; cf. the further carrying out of this thought in Mic 3:1-3 (especially Mic 3:3 extr.: “just as in the pot and as flesh within the caldron.”). Instead of לֹא קָרָאוּ ה Jeremiah says in Jer 10:21 (cf. however, Jer 10:25): לֹא דָרָשׁוּ וְאֶת־ה. The meaning is like that in Hos 7:7. They do not pray as it becomes man who is endowed with mind, therefore they are like cattle, and act like beasts of prey.