Psalms Chapter 82 verse 5 Holy Bible
They know not, neither do they understand; They walk to and fro in darkness: All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
read chapter 82 in ASV
They have no knowledge or sense; they go about in the dark: all the bases of the earth are moved.
read chapter 82 in BBE
They know not, neither do they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are moved.
read chapter 82 in DARBY
They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
read chapter 82 in KJV
They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
read chapter 82 in WBT
They don't know, neither do they understand. They walk back and forth in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
read chapter 82 in WEB
They knew not, nor do they understand, In darkness they walk habitually, Moved are all the foundations of earth.
read chapter 82 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 5. - They know not, neither will they understand. Scarcely "an aside from the indignant judge," as Professor Cheyne suggests, much less a remark interpolated by the poet (Ewald, Hitzig). Rather a complaint of human perversity, addressed by Jehovah to the angelic host who are present (ver. 1). It is not an accidental and excusable ignorance, but a wilful and guilty one that is spoken cf. They walk on in darkness. Loving darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil (John 3:19), they walked in the way of darkness (Proverbs 2:13). All the foundations of the earth are out of course; rather, are shaken. The fundamental bases on which the life of man upon the earth rests, the very principles of morality, are shaken, and totter to their fail, when those whose place it is to administer justice pervert it and deal out injustice instead.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(5) Here we imagine a pause, that interval between warning and judgment which is God's pity and man's opportunity; but the expostulation falls dead without a response. The men are infatuated by their position and blinded by their pride, and the poet, the spectator of this drama of judgment, makes this common reflection. The perversion of judgment strikes him, as it could not fail to do, as an indication of total anarchy and a dissolution of society, a convulsion like an earthquake.They know not.--Comp. Psalm 58:4, "They have no knowledge;" there, too, of judges corrupted by the moral blindness which, as in the case of Lord Bacon, sometimes so strangely darkens those in whom intellectual light is most keen.They walk on in darkness--Or, better, They let themselves walk in darkness; the conjugation implying that inclination or will, and not circumstance, brings this dullness to the dictates of justice and right.All the foundations . . .--The very existence of society is threatened when the source of justice is corrupt."Back flow the sacred rivers to their source,And right and all things veer around their course;Crafty are men in council, and no moreGod-plighted faith abides as once of yore."EUR. Med., 409.
