Passage

Psalms 14.1

"The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good." (Psalms 14:1, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"1. ^{For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.} The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works; There is none that doeth good."

"2. Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there were any that did understand, That did seek after God. 3. They are all gone aside; They are together become filthy; There is none that doeth good, no, not one." (Psalms 14:1-3, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"1. For the Chief Musician. By David. The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt. They have done abominable deeds. There is no one who does good."

"2. Yahweh looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who understood, who sought after God. 3. They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one." (Psalms 14:1-3, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"1. To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."

"2. The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. 3. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. ^{filthy: Heb. stinking}" (Psalms 14:1-3, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"1. To the Overseer., By David. A fool hath said in his heart, 'God is not;' They have done corruptly, They have done abominable actions, There is not a doer of good."

"2. Jehovah from the heavens Hath looked on the sons of men, To see if there is a wise one, seeking God. 3. The whole have turned aside, Together they have been filthy: There is not a doer of good, not even one." (Psalms 14:1-3, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: David
Audience: worshipping Israel, especially the temple liturgy ("for the chief Musician")
Location: Israel; the psalm circulated in the temple worship tradition
Time period: c. 1000 BC under Davidic composition; later reused in second-temple liturgy

Theological reading

Psalm 14:1 is the Old Testament locus classicus for the Hebrew Bible's portrait of practical atheism. The Hebrew is nabal amar belibo en elohim, "a fool has said in his heart, no God." The Hebrew word for fool here is nabal, the term reserved in Israelite wisdom literature for the morally rebellious person, not merely the intellectually slow. To say en elohim in one's heart is not, in this idiom, to make a sophisticated metaphysical claim; it is to live as though God will not call to account. The verse therefore targets a practical-functional atheism that proceeds straight to they are corrupt, they have done abominable works, the moral consequence is the load-bearing part. The verse exposes the wish behind the assertion: the rebellion because there is no God comes first; the assertion that there is no God follows.

The psalm enters New Testament theology through Paul's quotation of Psalms 14:2-3 in Romans 3.10-12 as part of his sweeping indictment of universal human depravity. Paul reads David as describing not a special class of unbelievers but the human race as a whole apart from grace. The combined Pauline-Davidic claim is therefore that the en elohim assertion is the inner posture of every fallen heart toward God, made explicit in the self-conscious atheist and disguised in the moralist. This grounds the Reformed doctrine of total depravity and the broader Christian claim that the suppression of God in Romans 1.18-21 is not abnormal but native.

The verse functions apologetically in two registers. First, in the Suppression of God Thesis frame, atheism is not a neutral epistemic conclusion but a moral posture rationalized; the wisdom-folly axis runs through the will, not around it. Second, in presuppositional apologetics, Psalm 14:1 supplies the biblical anthropology that licenses confrontational engagement with the atheist's confessed worldview: the unbeliever is presented in Scripture not as someone who has not yet been given enough evidence but as someone whose heart-posture predetermines what counts as evidence. The verse pairs with Romans 1.18-21 to form the OT-NT diptych that grounds the presuppositional account of unbelief.

Key words

H0430 - elohim, elohim, the divine name the fool denies; the most basic biblical name for God
H3820 - lev, lev, "heart"; the inner seat of will and disposition, not merely cognition
H2896 - tov, tov, "good"; the moral measure the fool fails
H6213 - asah, asah, "to do, make"; the verb of moral action that follows from heart-posture

Theological themes

Practical atheism. Not a metaphysical position but a heart-posture rationalized.
Wisdom-folly axis. The biblical taxonomy of wisdom and folly runs through moral disposition, not raw intellect.
Total depravity. The Pauline reading in Romans 3 universalizes David's portrait.
Will-precedes-belief. Scripture orders the rebellion before the denial; not the other way around.

Cross-references

Romans 3.10-12, Paul quotes this psalm in his universal-depravity argument
Romans 1.18-21, the New Testament parallel on suppression of the truth
Psalms, book hub
Psalms 53:1, near-duplicate Davidic doublet of this psalm with one variant tradition

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.