GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 53:1-3
53 For the choir director.
According to mahalath.
A maskil by David.
This Psalm is nearly a duplicate of Psalm 14, but with some differences in the middle verses, especially verses 5 and 6. The musical direction, “According to mahalath,” is not in Psalm 14 but is repeated in Psalm 88. It is also the name of two women, a daughter of Ishmael (Genesis 28:9) and one of the granddaughters of David (2 Chronicles 22:18). The word seems to mean “sickness,” and could have been given to girls who were seriously ill as infants but survived. In the Psalms, the context suggests that it might be a sad melody. Surely a meditation on the wickedness of sinners is a sad affair.
Since this is addressed to the choir director, one wonders if David meant for it to be used in worship where the choir director served, which was at the special tent he set up in Jerusalem for the ark of the covenant (1 Chronicles 15:1; 16:37). The bronze altar remained at the tabernacle at Gibeon where Zadok the high priest served and made sacrifices (1 Chronicles 16:39; 2 Chronicles 1:5). However, Since Heman and Jeduthun and other other musicians also served at the tabernacle (1 Chronicles 16:42), the Psalm may have been intended for use at both locations.
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and abominably commit evil.
there is no one who does good.
David’s second wife, Abigail, was the widow of a foolish man named Nabal, whose very name meant “fool.” A foolish man is not an unbeliever because of his foolishness, but a man who is an unbeliever is always a fool. David brings together four different terms for “sin” in this one verse to show what he means. To be shachet (rhymes with “the gate”) can mean spoiled or ruined. It is what the wicked Midianites and Amalekites did to Israel’s fields: “They camped on the land and ruined the crops” (Judges 6:3).
Second and third are the words ta’av, to act abominably, and ‘avel, to be unrighteous or evil. Since Hebrew is poor in adverbs and adjectives, verbs are sometimes employed as adverbs and nouns as adjectives. The former is the case here. The Hebrew accent marks connect these two terms as a single thought-unit, and so it was understood as the translation has it here from ancient times.
The fourth term is “no one who does good.” This is simply the sad condition of man after the fall, a condition that did not change after the flood, as Moses teaches by repeating it before and after the flood account (Genesis 6:5; 8:21). The inclinations of man’s heart, every single thought, word, and deed, is only evil all the time, from conception to grave.
2 God looks down from heaven on all the sons of Adam
to see if there is anyone who understands, anyone who seeks God.
3 Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt;
there is no one who does good. There is not even one.
God knows man’s unrighteousness. He sees mankind’s corruption in all of us, lumped together here in the words “all the sons (children) of Adam.” We inherit every sin from our primordial father Adam, and we live in the state of unrighteousness all our lives.
By punishing unrighteousness, God shows that he himself is righteous and just. Also, God’s own righteousness shines with greater glory when compared with man’s unrighteous and sinful state, the same way that a white article stands out more brightly against a dark background, like when I spilled powdered sugar on my best black pants last night when my sons and I were frosting Christmas cookies. God’s constant pure glory is so much more obvious to us because of our constant and persistent sinfulness.
But this leads us to remember that God’s righteousness is also set in sharp relief because even though we can never attain it, nor even approach it on our own, he nevertheless gives it to us. We can’t cleanse ourselves of sin any more than I can cleanse myself of having the worst shade of blond hair. But if we confess that we have no power over our sins, Christ justifies us and declares us to be not guilty of our sin by his own blood shed for us. He invites us to put our faith in him, and seeing of our meager faith, he credits his own righteousness to our account.
So where David says with fearful exasperation, “There is not even one,” we know that there is rescue from God through Christ. We who put our faith in Christ pray for God’s divine grace. We know that our actions are evil, our flesh is evil, our words are evil, our heritage is evil and stained with nothing but evil, and even our very thoughts are evil. We are like a man contemplating whether or not he might get more than a wet foot by stepping into a puddle, not realizing that the puddle is so deep that he would be in over his head. This is our condition of sin. It is not a trivial thing, for we are in over our heads. But God in his mercy sent his own Son to take on our human flesh, to raise us up from the death of our wickedness and into everlasting life. God did not brush aside our wickedness as if nothing should be demanded to account for our sins, but Christ took our sins on himself, willingly and without complaining. He did this to declare us righteous, and to bring us forever into heaven.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Psalm 53:1-3 There is no one who does good