Ps. 14 (atheism and bread)

We have seen how, in many psalms, there are two competing spheres—that of Yhwh’s and that of chaos and destruction. To live in the sphere of Yhwh is to live in faithfulness to him and his Torah. To live in the sphere of chaos is, usually, to live either in idolatry or rebellion against Yhwh and his people. Implicit within both of these spheres is the fact that man lives his life embedded within a divine realm. Even when man is engaged in idolatry or rebellion, he is still interacting with a divine realm of the gods and understands his life to be measured by that realm.

 In psalm 14, however, we are given a glimpse into another mode of existence for those who live apart from Yhwh. In this psalm, the ‘sons of man’ are not worshipping another god, nor are they rebelling against Yhwh. Instead, they are acting as if Yhwh had no authority whatsoever over them and their actions. They are, in effect, practical atheists. I say ‘practical’ because their type of atheism is “spoken in their hearts” (vs. 1). It is, so to speak, the guiding assumption behind their every action; the air they breathe, in other words. Their lives are lived in atheism, not (cognitively) at atheism. Crucially, for them the earth has been severed from heaven and the divine realm; it operates, solely, according to the will of man and is governed, solely, according to man’s power. Here, man is not measured by heaven, but by man.

 For the psalmist, this severing of earth from heaven does not lead to a prudently, well-ordered society. Instead it becomes, literally, consumed in perversity, ‘horrible deeds’ and corruption. More deeply still, this realm attempts to destroy those who wish to maintain faithfulness to Yhwh and heaven. Here we get to the central image of the psalm: the act of feeding.

 Throughout the Scriptures man is reminded that “he does not live by bread alone”. When Israel is journeying through the dessert, this becomes a literal reality, when ‘bread from heaven’ descends once a day for six days. Each day the Israelites can gather it, but only what they can eat for that day. If they gathered more it would spoil. On the ‘sixth day’, they could gather twice as much and that portion, interestingly, did not spoil on the ‘seventh day’.  The Israelites are, here, not ‘living by bread alone’ because they must gather the bread in a faithfulness to Yhwh that includes faithfulness to the Sabbath itself. This ‘bread’ is a type of ‘creation bread’—produced for six days and then ‘resting’ on the seventh.

 In Psalm 14, though, the ‘sons of man’ do not observe this. They do live by bread alone. “They have eaten bread; on Yhwh they have not called.” For them, eating lacks any reference to a transcendent realm of giving and production.  It is, moreover, entirely non-liturgical (they do not ‘call’ to Yhwh). There is no Sabbath consumption or rest. And it is here that the psalmist reveals his craft most fully by combining this ‘eating of bread’ with the “consumption of my [Yhwh’s] people.”  For the psalmist, their consumption of purely earthly bread is an expression of their consumption of Yhwh’s people and the utter depravity and corruption that marks their lives. Just as the bread has no transcendent reality to it, so too does God’s people have no inherent value. For these men, bread and men are equally susceptible to their wills and dominion.

 At a deeper level still, what we find here is that an ambivalence to God leads to an ambivalence towards man. The image of ‘consuming’ Yhwh’s people is rather dull in comparison with other images in the psalms that tend to describe the wicked as attacking God’s people, or ‘tearing at them like a lion’. Here, though, something in a sense more perverse is at work. God’s people are simply fodder. They have no worth. This denigration is intimately tied to their denigration of Yhwh.  The psalmist makes this clear when he weds their atheism to being “fools” and then Yhwh chastises them for “failing to understand” when they consume his people. There is a deep sense that these men are faulty, utterly blind to the heavenly reality that surrounds them and measures them.

 It should be clear at this point that for those who live within Yhwh’s realm, the realm of the ‘sons of man’ is a terror. The will of man severed from faithfulness to Yhwh is and leads to corruption, perversity, oppression and willful confusion. In other words, remaining aloof from Yhwh and the divine realm places one in the realm that is understood as wickedness and chaos. Earth is made to be in relation to Heaven, like a bride to a bridegroom. When the ‘sons of man’, attempt to sever that relationship, the kingdom entrusted to them becomes folly. Man cannot live by bread alone because man cannot serve himself alone. There is Yhwh, and there is death (as the story of Genesis and Deuteronomy make clear). Man cannot set up a ‘third realm’ and operate independently of those two choices. When they try, they will still fall into the realm of chaos and death, but they will inhabit that realm in a particular mode of evil. This is the great lie of the psalm—the belief that man can ignore that choice and instead choose himself alone. To not choose Yhwh is to choose destruction.