of the two Psalms, we may leave the treatment of Psa 53:1-6 to its proper place, without bringing it forward here. It is not as though Psa 14:1-7 were intact. It is marked out as seven three-line verses, but Psa 14:5 and Psa 14:6, which ought to be the fifth and sixth three lines, are only two; and the original form appears to be destroyed by some deficiency. The difficulty is got over in Psa 53:1-6, by making the two two-line verses into one three-line verse, so that it consists only of six three-line verses. And in that Psalm the announcement of judgment is applied to foreign enemies, a circumstance which has influenced some critics and led them astray in the interpretation of Psa 14:1-7.
Verse 1
The perfect אמר, as in Psa 1:1; Psa 10:3, is the so-called abstract present (Ges. §126, 3), expressing a fact of universal experience, inferred from a number of single instances. The Old Testament language is unusually rich in epithets for the unwise. The simple, פּתי, and the silly, כּסיל, for the lowest branches of this scale; the fool, אויל, and the madman, הולל, the uppermost. In the middle comes the notion of the simpleton or maniac, נבל - a word from the verbal stem נבל which, according as that which forms the centre of the group of consonants lies either in נב (Genesis S. 636), or in בל (comp. אבל, אול, אמל, קמל), signifies either to be extended, to relax, to become frail, to wither, or to be prominent, eminere, Arab. nabula; so that consequently נבל means the relaxed, powerless, expressed in New Testament language: πνεῦμα οὐκ ἔχοντα. Thus Isaiah (Isa 32:6) describes the נבל: “a simpleton speaks simpleness and his heart does godless things, to practice tricks and to say foolish things against Jahve, to leave the soul of the hungry empty, and to refuse drink to the thirsty.” Accordingly נבל is the synonym of לץ the scoffer (vid., the definition in Pro 21:24). A free spirit of this class is reckoned according to the Scriptures among the empty, hollow, and devoid of mind. The thought, אין אלהים, which is the root of the thought and action of such a man, is the climax of imbecility. It is not merely practical atheism, that is intended by this maxim of the נבל. The heart according to Scripture language is not only the seat of volition, but also of thought. The נבל is
