In my alarm I said, “All men are liars!”
Parallel translations
- WEB I said in my haste, “All men are liars.”
- KJV I said in my haste, All men are liars.
- NKJV I said in my haste, “All men are liars.”
- NASB I said in my alarm, “All people are liars.”
- NLT In my anxiety I cried out to you, “These people are all liars!”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
In his alarm the psalmist concluded that all men are liars. It matters because human disappointment drives us to rely on God's unfailing truth.
Overview
Spoken in distress, this confession registers how human help and promises fail, in contrast to God's faithfulness already praised. It may reflect a hasty over-statement, yet it rightly redirects trust away from people to God alone. Only in the Lord, and supremely in Christ who is the truth, is there a wholly trustworthy refuge.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 6
- Rom 3:4Certainly not! Let God be true and every man a liar. As it is written: “So that You may be proved right when You speak and victorious when You judge.”
- Jer 9:4–5“Let everyone guard against his neighbor; do not trust any brother, for every brother deals craftily, and every friend spreads slander.
- Ps 31:22In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from Your sight!” But You heard my plea for mercy when I called to You for help.
- Ps 62:9Lowborn men are but a vapor, the exalted but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
- 1 Sam 27:1David, however, said to himself, “One of these days now I will be swept away by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will stop searching for me all over Israel, and I will slip out of his hand.”
- 2 Kgs 4:16And Elisha declared, “At this time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.” “No, my lord,” she said. “Do not lie to your maidservant, O man of God.”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 116:11 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.