Psalms 53

¹To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.

²God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

³Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

⁴Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.

Psa 53:1-6. Upon Mahalath--(See on Psa 88:1, title). Why this repetition of the fourteenth Psalm is given we do not know. 1-4. with few verbal changes, correspond with Psa 14:1-4.

⁵There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.

5. Instead of assurances of God’s presence with the pious, and a complaint of the wicked, Psa 14:5, 6 portrays the ruin of the latter, whose “bones” even “are scattered” (compare Psa 141:7), and who are put to shame as contemptuously rejected of God.