is full of cursing and bitterness:
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace have they not known:
There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them
that are under the law; that every {123} mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may be brought under the judgement of God: because by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through
the law _cometh_ the knowledge of sin.

1. The 'Scripture proof' which St. Paul here offers of universal human
corruption is, according to a recognized Hebrew practice, made up by
stringing together a number of separate texts,--Ps. xiv. 1-3, v. 9,
cxl. 3, x. 7, Isa. lix. 7, 8, Ps. xxxvi. 1. They represent the
impression made by human wickedness upon the righteous observer. The
estimate covers Israel as well as, indirectly, the world at large[1].
It is thus an authoritative rebuke to Jewish self-complacency. It is
as if an English preacher were to rebuke similar self-complacency in
Englishmen by a collection of passages from standard English
authorities, in which our nation was judged, in common with others, in
a manner most humiliating to its pride. It is this, though, inasmuch
as the psalmists and prophets were and are believed to have spoken
under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, it is also something more.

It is well known that, as the quotations in {124} the New Testament
have frequently affected the Greek text of the Old, so here this
conglomerate of quotations came to be attached altogether to Ps. xiv in
some Greek MSS., increasing it by four verses. Thence they passed into
the later Latin Vulgate. Thence into Coverdale's Bible and into the
Great Bible, and so into the Prayer Book version of the Psalms. But
our present Bible version remains true to the Hebrew original.

2. 'To be justified,' in ver. 20, means to be acquitted, or proved
righteous, or reckoned righteous in the trial before God. This, and
not to _make_ righteous, is the meaning of the word 'to justify,' both
in the Old and New Testament and elsewhere. There is scarcely an
exception. It is a forensic word, that is, a word derived from
processes of law, and it describes the favourable verdict after a
trial. It is used of vindicating God's character to His people[2], or
of vindicating one's own character; of God's judicial acceptance of men
or men's