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Psalm 14:4

Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don’t call on the LORD?

2The LORD looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who understood, who sought after God.
3They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one.
4Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don’t call on the LORD?
5There they were in great fear, for God is in the generation of the righteous.
6You frustrate the plan of the poor, because the LORD is his refuge.
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Notice

Bread makes the cruelty in this verse unsettling: those who consume God’s people treat their harm as something as ordinary as eating a meal.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

What does comparing harm to eating bread expose about how cruelty can become routine?

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Where have you seen people treated as expendable rather than as people who matter to God?

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How does the failure to call on YHWH shape this verse’s portrait of wrongdoing?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

12 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Psalm 79:6Pour out your wrath on the nations that don’t know you, on the kingdoms that don’t call on your name,Both passages link a lack of knowledge with a failure to call on God.
Jeremiah 10:25Pour out your wrath on the nations that don’t know you, and on the families that don’t call on your name; for they have devoured Jacob. Yes, they have devoured …Both describe people who devour God’s people and do not call on his name.
Proverbs 30:14There is a generation whose teeth are like swords, and their jaws like knives, to devour the poor from the earth, and the needy from among men.Both portray oppression as devouring people, with Proverbs naming the poor and needy as those consumed.
Amos 8:4Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail,Both use the language of eating or swallowing to expose harm done to vulnerable people.
Psalm 82:5They don’t know, neither do they understand. They walk back and forth in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.Both expose a lack of knowledge or understanding amid wrongdoing and its destructive effects.
Micah 3:3who also eat the flesh of my people, and peel their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as meat within the …Both describe violence against God’s people through the image of eating them, with Micah making the brutality explicit.
Romans 10:2For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.Both identify a lack of knowledge, though Romans describes zeal for God and the psalm describes people who do not call on him.
Psalm 27:2When evildoers came at me to eat up my flesh, even my adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell.Both depict evildoers as consuming people; Psalm 27 speaks from the threatened person’s own perspective.
Isaiah 64:7There is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have consumed us by means of our …Both connect iniquity with the absence of anyone calling on God’s name.
Romans 1:28Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;Both connect wrongdoing with a failure to acknowledge God in knowledge.
Numbers 14:9Only don’t rebel against the LORD, neither fear the people of the land; for they are bread for us. Their defense is removed from over them, and the LORD is …Both compare people to bread, though Numbers encourages courage before enemies while the psalm condemns those consuming God’s people.
Ephesians 4:17–18This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,Both connect a failure of understanding with a way of life the text rejects.
Where this verse fits

Injustice and anger. church hurt.

What the Bible says about anger →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Ask someone under pressure what support would help

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Encouragement

Harm can become routine to those who inflict it. The psalm names that cruelty without excuse, and its next lines name YHWH as the poor person’s refuge.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 14:4. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).