Psalm 53:4

The psalm opens with “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 53:1), and verse 4 shows what that belief does to the way people treat others. “Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge?” is a question that already knows its answer. David is exclaiming at how blind these people are to God, to his people and to where their own ways lead.

The workers of iniquity, po’ale aven in Hebrew, are people who make a practice of wrong. The verb pâʻal means to do or make, especially to practise, and ʼâven means nothingness, and from there trouble, vanity and wickedness. Put together, the phrase describes people whose whole way of life is given over to harm and injustice, done on purpose and done again and again.

Verse 5 is the turning point of the psalm. After the long description of human corruption, God acts. “There were they in great fear, where no fear was” means that the enemies of God’s people were overcome by terror when there was no army, danger or threat in sight. The dread came from God himself. The word pachad is dread, the word used in Psalm 119:120 for the fear that makes the flesh tremble. God rules over the heart and mind of every person, and he can turn the confidence of the strong into panic in a moment.

Scripture tells of this terror sent by God more than once. Before Israel entered Canaan, God promised to send his fear before them (Exodus 23:27). A trembling from God fell on the Philistines’ camp in the days of Saul and Jonathan (1 Samuel 14:15). The LORD made the Syrian army hear the noise of chariots and horses, and they fled for their lives (2 Kings 7:6). He threw the Amorites into confusion before Joshua and cast down great stones on them from heaven (Joshua 10:10–11), and he delivered Israel from Egypt at the Red Sea (Exodus 14). The matching verse in the twin psalm, Psalm 14:5, ties the same fear to God’s presence with the righteous.

After judgment comes longing. “Oh that” is a cry of earnest desire, a prayer that God’s deliverance would come. The word for salvation, yᵉshûwʻâh, comes from the root yasha, to save, and means deliverance, rescue, victory and welfare. Scripture uses it of rescue brought by people as well as by God, as when Jonathan is said to have “wrought this great salvation in Israel”, but it always traces every deliverance finally to the LORD. Here David asks for the whole of it: rescue from danger, oppression and affliction of every kind, and the peace and security that follow.

Zion is Jerusalem, the place God chose for his temple and his presence. Israel was called to sing praises to the LORD who dwells in Zion (Psalm 9:11), so it was natural to look there for his help. To ask for salvation “out of Zion” is to ask God to act from his own dwelling place, in a way that shows his rule and his faithfulness to his covenant. The prophets saw his law and word going out from Zion to the nations (Isaiah 2:3), and Zion’s light rising with the glory of the LORD (Isaiah 60:1–3). Psalm 14 closes with almost the same words (Psalm 14:7).

Psalm 53 and Psalm 14 share nearly the same Hebrew text, and both are David’s. The clearest difference is the name of God. Psalm 14 mostly uses Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, the personal name God gave to his covenant people, while Psalm 53 uses Elohim, God, throughout. Scripture does not tell us why David’s psalm appears twice. One may be a revision of the other for use in worship, or both may come from an earlier common form. Either way, God has given us the same message twice: the corruption of those who deny him, and the hope of his people in his salvation.

The psalm’s darkness and its hope both meet in Jesus Christ. In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), the very knowledge the workers of iniquity lack, and through his whole earthly life he called upon his Father in perfect trust and obedience. The fool who says there is no God rejects the Son, who could say, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Christ himself was devoured by the wicked. He suffered the worst injustice of all at the hands of those who did not know God, and Peter told the people of Jerusalem that they and their rulers crucified him through ignorance (Acts 3:17). Yet that cross became the means of salvation, and it opened the way for anyone to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved.

The fear and shame of verse 5 point to Christ’s victory. On the cross he triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). He promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18), and he must reign until every enemy is under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25). At the last every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11), and the unrepentant will try to hide from the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:16).

The salvation David longed for has a name. Jesus, Yeshua in Hebrew, means “the LORD saves”, and it comes from the same root as yᵉshûwʻâh. He brings back the captivity of his people from the bondage of sin and death, for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and those the Son makes free are free indeed (John 8:36). Believers come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, where Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant (Hebrews 12:22–24). Believers differ on how far “Israel” in this verse reaches. Many hold that the joy of Jacob is finally the joy of the church, the whole Israel of God gathered in Christ from every nation. That joy looks ahead to the day when God dwells with his people and wipes away every tear (Revelation 21:3–4).

These verses give God’s people words for the times when the godless prey on them and act as if no one will ever call them to account. The psalm names that cruelty plainly and traces it to its root, a life that never calls upon God. It shows us a God who sees what is done to his people, who can turn the confidence of their enemies into terror in a moment, and who sets himself against all who despise him.

It also shows that his judgment serves his mercy. The same God who scatters the bones of the besieger is the God who brings back the captivity of his people, and the last word of the psalm belongs to them: “Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.” In Christ that salvation has come out of Zion, and the prayer of verse 6 is ours to pray until it is fully answered.