Ps. 53.3 (an ominous verdict)

They have all / been faithless / and are all / impure
no one / does good;
no / not even one.  

On first glance, this verse seems to simply mirror the opening verse. The ‘faithlessness’ is perhaps parallel to the ‘vile deeds’ and the claim that ‘there is no god’; the ‘impurity’ parallel to ‘corruption’; and ‘no one does good’ is a direct quote. The difference exists, then, in the position of the verse and in the concluding line “no, not even one”. But these are important differences. What we see here is the result of God’s search, his examination of the ‘children of men’. Whereas the opening centered on the ‘fool’, God’s gaze blanketed the earth. It would have seemed from the opening, therefore, that only a certain category of persons was being described. However, once that judgment was moved into the realm of God’s search it became totalizing: to God everyone is a fool/atheist. This is going to find a very important qualification in the following verses. However, the fact that this is a ‘judgment’ rather than a description is crucial. As we have argued throughout, God’s ‘seeing’ and God’s ‘acting’ should coincide. (It is in the hiatus between the two that laments emerge.) This verdict, then, is ominous in the extreme. It is very similar to the Tower of Babel where God ‘looked down from heaven’ (in a very similar juxtaposition that highlighted the absurdity of the building; here: the atheistic claim). The ‘seeing’ of the Tower led to the people’s ‘scattering’ and ‘confusion’. Interestingly, so too will the judgment here be, not the ‘scattering of languages’ but the ‘scattering of bones’ (vs. 5).