Psalms 53:4

God is the speaker. The first clause may be taken as in A.V., -Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge?" Are they so ignorant that they cannot distinguish between right and wrong? Cp. Psalms 53:2, and Psalms 82:5. But a much better connexion with Psalms 53:5 is gained by rendering, Have not the workers of iniquity been made to know?i.e. taught by sharp experience to recognise their error. Then Psalms 53:5 follows as an answer to the question, pointing to the plain white with the bones of Jerusalem's besiegers. For this pregnant sense of knowcp. Hosea 9:7; Judges 8:16 (taught, lit. made to know).

who eat up&c. The A.V. follows the Ancient Versions in understanding this to mean, -they devour my people as naturally as they take their daily food." And this they do without regard to God (in Psalms 14, Jehovah). Cp. for the phrase, Numbers 14:9, "the people of the land are bread for us"; Numbers 24:8; and for the fact, Isaiah 1:7; Jeremiah 10:25; Jeremiah 30:16; Habakkuk 3:14; Psalms 79:7. The reference to national deliverance in the following verse excludes (at any rate in this recension of the Ps.) the explanation of -my people" as the godly few in Israel (Micah 2:9; Micah 3:3; Micah 3:5, and often in the prophets), and of -the workers of iniquity" as the nobles who impoverished them by unjust extortions (Micah 3:1 ff; Isaiah 3:14 f; Proverbs 30:14).