Psalms 14:6

You have shamed R.V., Ye put to shame. You deride the resort of the afflicted to Jehovah as mere folly. But the word usually means to frustrateor confound: and the line maybe explained, -Would ye frustrate the counsel of the poor! Nay! for Jehovah" &c. Cp. R.V. marg., which gives Butfor Because.

the poor Or, afflicted. Cp. Psalms 9:12: and Exodus 3:7; Exodus 3:17; Exodus 4:31.

In Psalms 53 the equivalent of Psalms 14:5 reads thus:

"For God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee;

Thou hast put them to shame, because God hath rejected them."

The bones of Israel's enemies lie bleaching upon the field of battle, where their bodies were left unburied (Ezekiel 6:5). This can hardly be an anticipation of some future defeat. It must rather be an allusion to some historic event; and it at once suggests the miraculous annihilation of Sennacherib's great army. The text appears to have been altered by the editor of Book II to introduce a reference to the most famous example in later times of the discomfiture of worldly arrogance venturing to measure its strength with Jehovah. With this reading it is clear that Psalms 14:4 must refer to the nation and its enemies, not to oppressors and their victims within the nation.