Psalms 14:3

They are all gone aside,.... As bankrupts, having run out their whole stock, and into debt, and have nothing to pay, nor make composition with, and are obliged to abscond, as Adam, Genesis 3:8.

They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. They are all gone aside - the condition by nature of all without exception: "children of men" (Psalms 14:2).

Gone aside, to wit, from God, whom they should have sought, , and from the rule which he hath given them, and by which they sometimes professed and seemed to govern themselves. Or, are grown sour, as this word signifies, . And so this is a metaphor from corrupted drinks, as the next is taken from rotten meat. Filthy, Heb. stinking i.e. loathsome and abominable to God, and to all wise and sober men.

Psalms 14:3 They are all gone aside, they are [all] together become filthy: [there is] none that doeth good, no, not one.Ver. 3. They are all gone aside, &c.] This is God’ s own report of the matter, fully answering to that before given in by David, Psalms 14:1. Good men have the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2:16, and do fully concur with him in judgment and affection. David was a man after God’ s own heart; and the heart of Paul is the heart of Christ, saith Chrysostom. But why, then, doth not David except himself out of this universitas declinantium, community of stragglers that are gone aside? and why doth St Paul argue from this text that all, both Jews and Gentiles, are stark naught? Romans 3:10-12. I answer, because by nature there is never a better of us; but κακοιμενθριπεςκακοιηδεκαιιπες, as the Greek proverb hath it. "All we like sheep have gone astray," saith the whole Church, Isaiah 53:6 Homo est inversus decalogus, we naturally all stand across to all goodness. The word here rendered gone aside signifieth to give back sturdily, as a stubborn heifer, that refuseth to receive the yoke. They are altogether become filthy] Heb. stinking, yielding a worse smell than carrion doth, or than the filthy fox doth, of whom Oppianus reporteth (and experience showeth it to be true), that when he is beset on all sides by the dogs that hunt him, he bewrayeth his tail with urine and dung, of a most loathsome smell, and besmearing therewith the dogs’ noses, driveth them away therewith many times (Bodin. Theat. Nat. 352). But all this is nothing to the filth and stench of sin, which made their very incense an abomination, Isaiah 1:13; and rendereth them most like the devil, that foul spirit, that ever goeth out with a stench, as they say of him. The Hebrews have the same word for sin and a dead carcase; and again the same word for sin and stench. τπψξηψ God’ s vineyard brought forth stinking grapes, αΰשׁιν Isaiah 5:5, and the wicked utter rotten language, Dογοςσαπρος, Ephesians 5:4 Hence Longinquus est Iehovah ab impiis, The Lord stands aloof off from the wicked, Proverbs 15:29 Psalms 5:5, that is, from all for whom Christ hath not given himself "an offering, and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour," Ephesians 5:2. The apostle rendereth it, they are useless, ηχρειωθησον, or, as he elsewhere phraseth it, "to every good work reprobate," Titus 1:16. There is none that doeth good] Spiritually good, and unto divine acceptation. There is many times malum opus in bona materia. How can you that are evil do good works? Good they may be materially, but not formally and eventually; such were the good parts and practices of Socrates, Aristides, Scipio, Atticus, Cato, and other honest heathens; they were no better than splendida peccata, glistering sins, because they failed, 1.

(3) Filthy.—Better, corrupt or putrid. Comp. the Roman satirist’s description of his age:— “Nothing is left, nothing for future times To add to the full catalogue of crimes. The baffled sons must feel the same desires And act the same mad follies as their sires. Vice has attained its zenith.”—JUVENAL: Sat. i.Between Psalms 14:3-4 the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX., followed by the Vulg. and the English Prayer-book version, and the Arabic, insert from Romans 3:13-18, the passage beginning, “Their throat is an open sepulchre.” The fact of these verses, which are really a cento from various psalms and Isaiah, following immediately on the quotation of Psa 14:2-3, led the copyist to this insertion. (See Note in New Testament Commentary to Romans 3:13.)

Verse 3. They are all gone aside] They will not walk in the straight path. They seek crooked ways; and they have departed from truth, and the God of truth. They are all together become filthy] נאלחו neelachu. They are become sour and rancid; a metaphor taken from milk that has fermented and turned sour, rancid, and worthless. There is none that doeth good, no, not one.] This is not only the state of heathen Babylon! but the state of the whole inhabitants of the earth, till the grace of God changes their heart. By nature, and from nature, by practice, every man is sinful and corrupt. He feels no good; he is disposed to no good; he does no good. And even God himself, who cannot be deceived, cannot find a single exception to this! Lord, what is man? The Vulgate, the Roman copy of the Septuagint, the AEthiopic, and the Arabic, add those six verses here which are quoted by St. Paul, Romans 3:13-18. See the notes on those passages, and see the observations at the end of this Psalm. See Clarke on Psalms 14:7.

3. The result of the investigation. All were turned aside from the path of right (Exodus 32:8; Judges 2:17): together had they become tainted, a word which in Arabic means to go bad or turn sour, but in Hebr. is used only in a moral sense, here and in Job 15:16. Three verses follow here in the P.B.V. which are not in the Hebrew text, and are rightly omitted in the A.V. The first three verses of the Psalm are quoted by St Paul in Romans 3:10-12, in proof of the universal depravity of mankind. He supplements them by further quotations from Psalms 5:9; Psalms 140:3; Psalms 10:7; Isaiah 59:7-8; Psalms 36:1 : and this cento of passages was at an early date interpolated in the LXX, from which it passed to the Vulgate, and thence to the P.B.V. The addition is found in the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS. (B and à), and other MSS. which represent the older unrevised text; but was rightly obelized by Origen, and has disappeared from the Alexandrian MS. (A) and the mass of later MSS.

They are all gone aside - This verse states the result of the divine investigation referred to in the previous verse. The result, as seen by God himself, was, that “all” were seen to have gone aside, and to have become filthy.

2, 3. The Lord looked down… to see—An anthropomorphism, simply denoting that he made special judicial inquiry; that is, that he took accurate judicial knowledge of men’s acts, such as we arrive at