"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God, " begins Psalm 14. This kind of fool is not what we now call an atheist. one who does not believe in the existence of God. Instead, this is what we might call a "practical atheist", a person who knows that God exists but does not believe that God will hold him accountable for his deeds \
In biblical wisdom literature, the wise are those who fear God and heed his teaching. Wisdom literature contrasts the wise with fools, those who do not fear God or heed his teaching. This kind of folly is synonymous with wickedness, as we see in the remainder of Ps 14:1: "They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good."
The psalmist laments the fact that there is so much of this folly extant, even among God's people. "They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one" (v 3). He affirms that God does indeed see and care about human behavior, which means that fools are in for some unpleasant surprises when their day of reckoning comes.
The psalm closes with a prayer for the restoration of Israel (v 7).
Paul quotes Ps 14:1-3 along with a number of other passages (Pss 5: 9; 140: 3; 10: 7; Isa 59: 7-8; Ps 36: 1) to make the point that all people have sinned (Rom 3:9-18). Interestingly, there are some manuscripts of the Septuagint in which verses 13-18 of Romans 3 are inserted between Ps 14:3 and Ps 14:4, clearly a Christian interpolation.
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