to be (causatively · verb, hiphil imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 92:6 A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this.
Titus 3:3 For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful,…
Psalms 49:10 For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.
Deuteronomy 32:29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!
Proverbs 12:1 Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish.
Isaiah 27:11 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding…
Romans 3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
Psalms 73:22 So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 94:1-11
In these verses we have,
I. A solemn appeal to God against the cruel oppressors of his people, Psa 94:1, Psa 94:2. This speaks terror enough to them, that they have the prayers of God's people against them, who cry day and night to him to avenge them of their adversaries; and shall he not avenge them speedily? Luk 18:3, Luk 18:7. Observe here,
1. The titles they give to God for the encouraging of their faith in this appeal: O God! to whom vengeance belongeth; and thou Judge of the earth. We may with boldness appeal to him; for, (1.) He is judge, supreme judge, judge alone, from whom every man's judgment proceeds. He that gives law gives sentence upon every man according to his works, by the…
Understand, ye brutish among the people,.... Or the most brutish and stupid of all people; especially that profess themselves to be the people of God, or Christians, as the Papists do; and who seem to be the persons here addressed: "brutish"; to murder the servants of the Lord, and drink their blood, till inebriated with it; stupid to the last degree to think that hereby they did God good service: hence the pope, the head of them, is represented both in his secular and ecclesiastical power by two beasts; the one rising out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns, a monster in nature, most like a leopard, his feet as a bear's, and his mouth as a lion's, having the fierceness and cruelty of…
Psalm 94:7-10
7. And they have said, God shall not see, the God of Jacob shall not know. 8. Understand, ye stupid [17] among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise? 9. He that planted [18] the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? 10. He that chastiseth the nations, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge. [19]
7. And they have said, God shall not see When the Psalmist speaks of the wicked as taunting God with blindness and ignorance, we are not to conceive of them as just exactly entertaining this imagination of him in their hearts, but they despise his judgments as much as if he took no cognisance of human affairs. Were the truth graven up…
The Church Fathers
Take care, then, to avoid what the great apostle sets forth so fearfully, and when you feel that you do not understand, make an immediate act of faith in what is divinely revealed, that there is both free will in humans and grace from God; and pray that what you religiously believe you may also wisely understand. Indeed, it is for this very reason that we have free will that we may wisely understand, for, unless our understanding and wisdom were regulated by free will, we should not be commanded in the words of Scripture: "Understand, you senseless among the people; and you fools be wise at last." The very fact, then, that we are instructed and commanded to understand and be wise is proof of a demand on our obedience, which cannot exist without free will. But, if it were possible for this to be accomplished by free will without the grace of God, namely, that we should understand and be wise, we should not have to say to God, "Give me understanding that I may know your commandments"; nor would it be written in the Gospel, "Then he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures"; nor would the apostle James have said, "But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all people abundantly and upbraids not: and it will be given to him."
"Understand, you who are foolish among the people, and be wise at last, you fools. He who planted the ear, shall he not hear?" He who is a potter, is he ignorant of his own vessel? He who makes another hear, shall he then himself not hear? He who gave me eyes, shall he then himself not see? He who is the author of my understanding, shall he himself not understand? This passage tells especially against those who are Anthropomorphites, who say that God has the members that we too have. For example, God is said to have eyes: "The eyes of the Lord look upon all things"; "the hand of God makes all things." "And Adam heard," it says, "the sound of the Lord's feet walking in paradise." These things they hear simply, and refer human weaknesses to the majesty of God. But I say that God is wholly eye, wholly hand, wholly foot. He is wholly eye, because he sees all things; wholly hand, because he works all things; wholly foot, because he is everywhere. So see what he says: "He who planted the ear, shall he not hear?" He did not say, "He who planted the ear, does he then himself not have an ear?" He did not say, "Does he then himself not have eyes?" But what did he say? "He who planted the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eyes, does he not consider?" He took away the members, he bestowed the functions.
Dictionary and topics
Blindness · 21:14;22:13,14; — 21:14;22:13,14;
Infidelity · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The third strophe now turns from those bloodthirsty, blasphemous oppressors of the people of God whose conduct calls forth the vengeance of Jahve, to those among the people themselves, who have been puzzled about the omniscience and indirectly about the righteousness of God by the fact that this vengeance is delayed. They are called בערים and כסילים in the sense of Psa 73:21. Those hitherto described against whom God's vengeance is supplicated are this also; but this appellation would be too one-sided for them, and בּעם refers the address expressly to a class of men among the people whom those oppress and slay. It is absurd that God, the planter of the ear (הנּטע, like שׁסע in Lev 11:7, with…
Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?
Understand, ye brutish among the people. They said that God did not note, and now, using the same word in the original, the psalmist calls on the wicked to note, and have regard to the truth. He designates them as boors, boarish, swinish men, and well was the term deserved; and he bids them understand or consider, if they can. They thought themselves to be wise, and indeed the only men of wit in the world, but he calls them "boars among the people": wicked men are fools, and the more they know, the more foolish they become. "No fool like a learned fool" is a true proverb. When a man has done with God, he has done w…
"Understand, you who are foolish among the people; and you fools, at last be wise. Shall he who planted the ear not hear? Shall he who fashioned the eye not consider?" By an argument from nature he rebukes and convicts the sinners. O you who suppose that mortal things do not pertain to the Lord, you who, along with Epicurus, say that God's care is kept apart from human affairs, listen to the argument from nature: because you are little children, I will offer you little examples. He who gave hearing to man, shall he himself not hear? And at the same time, see what he says. He did not repay like with like: for he did not say, "Shall he who planted the ear not himself have an ear?" or "Shall he who fashioned the eye not himself have an eye?" But because in God there are no members, therefore he speaks in such a way that we, as often as we read such things about God as are frequently found in the Scriptures, may understand that an operation is signified, not members. In Solomon we read: "In the hand of the tongue are death and life." Does the tongue then have a hand? But in order that we may come more easily to the understanding of the sense above, we have brought forward this testimony: for by the same reasoning by which you would give the tongue a hand, by that same reasoning you are going to give God all members.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
