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Psalm 53 · a question people ask

"God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you. You have put them to shame" (53:5). Who is you?

In the text

The psalm doesn't name either one. In Hebrew there are two different yous in the verse (as the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible tags the Westminster Leningrad Codex): the you that someone "encamps against" is feminine and singular, and the You who has "put them to shame" is masculine and singular (53:5). Psalm 14:6's you, in "You frustrate the plan of the poor" (Psalm 14:6), is plural, and it isn't named either. The psalm does name my people, whom "the workers of iniquity" eat up "as they eat bread" (53:4), and it ends with Israel and Jacob: "then Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad" (53:6). These notes don't say more about who the yous are than the psalm does.

The verses

“Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don’t call on God? There they were in great fear, where no fear was, for God has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you. You have put them to shame, because God has rejected them. Oh that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When God brings back his people from captivity, then Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.”
Psalm 53:4-6 · World English Bible
“You frustrate the plan of the poor, because the LORD is his refuge.”
Psalm 14:6 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Psalm 53

Psalm 53: Where no fear was

Psalm 53 is almost Psalm 14, with lines of its own. It never has the LORD: it names God seven times, and after the fool's There is no God (53:1), God looks down, scatters, rejects and brings back. Only here are they in great fear where no fear was (53:5). And the title's contemplation is spelled in Hebrew like 53:2's understood.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions