The World Is Full Of Fools
Psalm 14
An EasyEnglish Translation with Notes (about 1200 word vocabulary) on Psalm 14
Words in boxes are from the Bible. Words in brackets, ( ), are not in the Hebrew Bible.
Jesus said, "The Son of man has come to save people that are lost". (Matthew 18: 11)
(This is) a song of David for the music leader.
v1 A man
without shame says in his heart, "There is no God".
Everybody is bad. They are
all evil.
Nobody is doing anything
good.
v2 The LORD
is looking down from heaven on the sons of man.
He is looking to see if there
is anyone that understands.
He is looking to see if
anyone is looking for God.
v3 But
everybody has turned away (from God).
They have all become evil.
Nobody does anything that is
good.
v4 Will
they never learn? They do evil.
They eat my people (as
easily) as they eat bread.
They never talk to God.
v5 There
they were afraid. They were very much afraid.
This was because God was with
the righteous.
v6 They
tried to stop the plans of the poor people.
But the poor people hid in
the LORD.
v7 Oh, who
will come from Zion and make Israel safe?
When the LORD makes his people rich and happy again,
then this is what will happen:
Jacob will sing and Israel will dance.
shame ~ what we should feel when we do something bad
Jacob ~ another name for Israel
David met a man. His name was Nabal. Nabal was a bad man. Nabal would not give help to David. Soon, Nabal died. Nabal is the Hebrew word for 'fool'. There are 2 groups of fools. One does funny things and makes us laugh. The other does bad things, but he does not feel that he did wrong. We say that he feels no shame. This Psalm is about the second group of fools. The full story is in 1 Samuel 25.
Verse 1: David says that the world is full
of Nabals. "Everyone is bad". We often feel
like this. There are many bad people in the world. But there
are some people that love God. The Bible calls them righteous. See
below, after 'Something to do' for what "righteous" means.
Verses 2 – 4: The LORD is looking on the "sons of man". In Hebrew this means the leaders of the enemies of God. It does not include righteous people. "Eat my people as they eat bread" means that bad men kill righteous people. They do it as easily as they eat a meal. They feel no shame. Note that in Matthew 18: 11 Jesus called himself "the Son of man" but it does not mean the same thing!
Verses 5 – 6: But God is with his people. When this happens, bad men feel afraid. They feel that God is there. They cannot explain it. They feel as the Egyptians that drowned in the Red Sea. The story is in Exodus 14. The Jews thought that "there" in Psalm 14:5 meant the Red Sea. "Hid in the LORD" means that they believed God. They hoped that he would give them help.
Verse 7: David prays for somebody that will make Israel safe. "Safe" in Hebrew is the word that we get our word Jesus from. God answered David many times. At last God came to earth. He came as Jesus Christ. That is why Christians sing and dance! Believers are the true Israel of God, not the country of Israel.
1. In the Bible read the stories of:
· Nabal. This is in 1 Samuel 25
· The Egyptians in the Red Sea. This is in Exodus 14
2. Sometimes you may think that there are only bad people in the world. When that happens ask God for Christian friends!
This is a
difficult word to understand. In the Bible it means 4
things. The context usually tells us what it means. The context is the verses
before and after it in the Bible.
Here are
the 4 things that it means:
1. It tells us about God.
It means that he has never done anything that is wrong. He has never broken his
own rules. He has always done what is right.
2. Even though only God
is really righteous, he calls his friends righteous.
It does not mean that they are good. It means that they have asked God to
forgive them. The word "forgive" means "to give away". God
gives away all the sin of the people that he forgives to Jesus. Jesus takes it
away. This happened when Jesus died on the Cross at Calvary. By some strange
way that we cannot understand, Jesus took our sins away. Our sins are the
things that we do that are wrong, the things that we do that do not obey God's
rules. When Jesus died, he took away the sins of the people that lived before
him and that lived after him. That includes us ... if we ask!
3. The people that God
forgives usually try to obey God. They do what he tells them to do. This is
also called "being righteous" in the Bible. When they fail, they pray
again, "God, forgive me". God will always
forgive us when we ask him.
4. In the Old Testament,
the Jews tried to obey the TORAH.
This was all the rules in the Old Testament. Most of them were in the first 5
books of the Bible. The Jews called them the Torah. Later, other books like
Isaiah and Jeremiah were also called Torah. Jews that
kept these rules were called "righteous".
This meaning of the word is not important for Christians today. They are
righteous for reasons 2 and 3.
Righteous
people have what the Bible calls RIGHTEOUSNESS.
It means that they have asked God to forgive them. It does not mean that they
are very good. It means that they are friends of Jesus, because they have asked
him to take away their sin.
© 2001, Wycliffe Associates (UK)
This publication is written in EasyEnglish Level A (1200 words)
January 2001
Visit our website: www.easyenglish.bible