Seven verses on a single accusation: not that anyone argues God out of existence, but that people behave as though nobody is watching. Almost the same poem appears again as Psalm 53, with a different divine name and a different verse 6, so reading the two side by side is the cleanest look you will get at how a psalm travelled and was re-edited. For a learner the useful pattern here is the negative existential particle ein, which shows up four times and carries the whole indictment: no God, none doing good, none, not even one.
♫ Guitar suggestion, hover a chord to explore or change
♪ TuningE A D G B E
| AmAm | EmEm | AmDm | EmAm |
~70 BPM · 4/4 · gentle thumb-index-middle arpeggio · one bar per stich, two bars per verse · to reset the progression:
Active voicings · printable
The voicing displayed for each chord is the one you selected in its popup. Navigate with the popup arrows to change.
The LORD looked down from heaven on the children of man,
לִרְאוֹת
lir-OT
to see
הֲיֵשׁ
ha-YESH
whether there is
מַשְׂכִּיל
mas-KIL
one who has sense
דֹּרֵשׁ
do-RESH
one who seeks
אֶת
et
(object marker)
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
to see whether there is anyone with sense, anyone seeking God.
The camera reverses. Verse 1 was a man looking inward and finding nothing above him; here the looking runs the other way, and the search is for one person with sense.
The abstract corruption of verses 1 to 3 acquires victims. Eating is the image: my people are consumed as casually as a meal, without appetite or malice, which is the point.
5
שָׁם פָּחֲדוּ פָחַד
כִּי אֱלֹהִים בְּדוֹר צַדִּיק
שָׁם
sham
there
פָּחֲדוּ
pa-cha-DU
they dreaded
פָחַד
fa-CHAD
a dread
There they were seized with dread,
כִּי
ki
for
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
בְּדוֹר
bdor
is in the generation of
צַדִּיק
tza-DIK
the righteous
for God is in the generation of the righteous.
The turn. Nothing is said to have happened to the wicked; what changes is that they are afraid, and the reason given is presence rather than punishment.
6
עֲצַת עָנִי תָבִישׁוּ
כִּי יְהֹוָה מַחְסֵהוּ
עֲצַת
a-TZAT
the counsel of
עָנִי
a-NI
the poor man
תָבִישׁוּ
ta-vi-SHU
you would put to shame
You would shame the counsel of the poor man,
כִּי
ki
for
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
מַחְסֵהוּ
mach-se-HU
is his refuge
but the LORD is his refuge.
The only verse addressed to the wicked directly, in the second person plural. Their target is not the poor man's body but his judgement, his plan, the thing they consider naive.
Who will give the deliverance of Israel out of Zion!
בְּשׁוּב
be-SHUV
when turns back
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
שְׁבוּת
shvut
the fortunes of
עַמּוֹ
a-MO
His people
When the LORD turns back the fortunes of His people,
יָגֵל
ya-GEL
let rejoice
יַעֲקֹב
ya-a-KOV
Jacob
יִשְׂמַח
yis-MACH
let be glad
יִשְׂרָאֵל
yis-ra-EL
Israel
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
The psalm ends outside its own argument. Nothing in verses 1 to 6 has been resolved; instead the speaker asks for a rescue that has not arrived, and dates the joy to a future turning.
♦ PARDES analysis: פרדס
The four levels of Jewish reading of the sacred text: פשט Peshat (literal meaning), רמז Remez (symbolic allusion), דרש Drash (midrashic interpretation), סוד Sod (mystical meaning). The word פרדס means "orchard", each level is a fruit.
פשט · Peshat: literal meaning
Three movements. Verses 1 to 3 state the charge and repeat it, verses 4 to 6 dramatise it with victims and a sudden fear, verse 7 breaks frame and asks for rescue. The keyword is the particle of non-existence: there is no God, there is none doing good, there is none, not even one. Notice that the fool of נָבָל (na-val, v.1) never argues. He says it in his heart, and the psalm treats that as a practical position rather than a philosophical one, which is why the evidence offered against him is behaviour and not proof.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The word for fool at נָבָל (na-val, v.1) is not a word for stupidity. It names moral collapse, and it is the name of the man in the Samuel narrative whose wife says that folly goes with him. The same root produces a verb meaning to wither and a noun for a carcass, so the fool is not the ignorant man but the one who has gone slack. In פָחַד (fa-chad, v.5) the noun repeats its own verb, dread a dread, a cognate accusative that Hebrew uses to intensify: they were not merely afraid, they were afraid with fear. The opening of verse 7, מִי (mi, v.7) and יִתֵּן (yi-ten, v.7), is idiomatic: literally who will give, functionally if only.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
This psalm appears twice in the book. Psalm 53 carries almost the same text with the divine name systematically changed and a different verse 6, which makes the pair the standard test case for how psalms were transmitted and reused in different collections. Readers have long taken the denial of verse 1 not as atheism but as a calculation: the fool grants that there is a God and bets that God does not look, which is why the psalm answers him in verse 2 with a God who does exactly that. The phrase turned back the fortunes in verse 7 was read in exile as a promise about return, and the psalm was said as a complaint that redemption had not yet come.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The mystical reading follows the withering sense of the root behind נָבָל (na-val, v.1): the fool is a soul that has fallen out of its own vitality, and his statement about God is a report on his own inner state rather than about heaven. On this reading verse 2 is not surveillance but attention seeking a channel, and the fear of פָחַד (fa-chad, v.5) is what happens when a closed system is touched by a presence it had ruled out. The final verse then reads as the standard structure of redemption: the deliverance comes out of Zion, that is, from a fixed point that was there the whole time, and the two names Jacob and Israel mark the same person before and after the change.
Hebrew text: Miqra according to the Masorah (MAM), after the Aleppo Codex, via Sefaria, CC BY-SA. English: The Holy Scriptures, a New Translation (JPS 1917), via Sefaria, public domain. Transliteration generated by this site's own engine (assets/translit.js).