What Does Psalm 14:4 Mean?
Do all the workers of crookedness not perceive? They eat my people as they eat bread; they do not call out to the LORD.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.THE KEY
The verse measures knowing the LORD by how people are treated: those who consume people as bread have failed to perceive him.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever people become provision for another’s appetite: the harm and the refusal to call upon the LORD belong together. Its question exposes failed recognition, not merely missing information.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
I can consume other people and still truly know the LORD.
THE ROOT
יָדְעוּ
yādeʿû
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
“not perceive” in this verse is yādeʿû. The Hebrew asks whether they truly perceive, not simply whether they possess facts. The same root gives דַּעַת (daʿat, knowledge) and יוֹדֵעַ (yōdēaʿ, one who knows); here, consuming people reveals a failure to recognize the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge or perception.
דַּעַת
This branch shows that knowing is an active capacity to perceive, the very capacity the verse says is absent.
yōdēaʿ: One who knows or recognizes.
יוֹדֵעַ
The verse’s question reaches beyond information to whether a person can recognize the LORD.
אֹכְלֵי
ʾokhlê
GROWS FROM
אכל
To eat or consume.
The Hebrew first names them as eaters of God’s people, then says they eat bread. The parallel makes human lives their daily food: exploitation has become as ordinary as eating.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōkhel: Food or nourishment.
אֹכֶל
This branch sharpens the verse’s image of people being treated as what sustains an appetite.
maʾăkhal: Food; something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
The word for what is eaten echoes the verse’s portrayal of people as consumable.
קָרָאוּ
qārāʾû
GROWS FROM
קרא
To call, summon, or proclaim.
“call out to” in this verse is qārāʾû. Calling is an act of addressing and turning toward someone. The verse places the refusal to call upon the LORD beside the consumption of people, exposing a life that neither recognizes him nor addresses him.
ALSO GROWS
qəriʾāh: Calling or reading aloud.
קְרִיאָה
This branch shows calling as an act of giving voice and address.
miqrāʾ: A convocation or reading.
מִקְרָא
This branch carries the root’s sense of calling together, widening the word beyond a private utterance.
THE PATTERN
A person’s treatment of others reveals whether God is perceived.
Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from them, and break open their bones, and chop them in pieces, as meat for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.The ox perceives its owner, and the donkey its master's trough. But Israel does not perceive; my people do not discern.And the King answers and says to them, Truly, I say to you, Whatever you did to one of the least of these my brothers, you did to me.THE THREAD
The ox perceives its owner, and the donkey its master's trough. But Israel does not perceive; my people do not discern.The Psalm’s “know” and Isaiah’s “know” share the root ידע (yada, to know or perceive). Isaiah gives the Psalm’s question a sharper image: the failure is not simply missing information, but failing to recognize the one who sustains them.
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