Yet they say, “The Lord does not see, Nor does the God of Jacob understand.”
Parallel translations
- WEB They say, “Yah will not see, neither will Jacob’s God consider.”
- KJV Yet they say, The LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.
- BSB They say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.”
- NASB They have said, “The Lord does not see, Nor does the God of Jacob perceive.”
- NLT “The Lord isn’t looking,” they say, “and besides, the God of Israel doesn’t care.”
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
The wicked say that the LORD does not see and the God of Jacob does not notice. Their evil flows from a practical denial of God's awareness.
Overview
The oppressors comfort themselves with the lie that God is blind to their deeds. This functional atheism, denying that God sees and cares, lies at the root of much injustice. The very next verses refute it: the God who made the eye certainly sees all (v.9; Psalm 10:11-14).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Ps 10:11–13He says in his heart, “God has forgotten. He hides his face. He will never see it.”
- Luke 18:3–4A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’
- Zeph 1:12It will happen at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are settled on their dregs, who say in their heart, “Yahweh will not do good, neither will he do evil.”
- Isa 29:15Woe to those who deeply hide their counsel from Yahweh, and whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us?” and “Who knows us?”
- Ps 59:7Behold, they spew with their mouth. Swords are in their lips, “For”, they say, “who hears us?”
- Job 22:12–13“Isn’t God in the heights of heaven? See the height of the stars, how high they are!
- Ezek 8:12Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.’”
- Ezek 9:9Then he said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perversion; for they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh doesn’t see.’
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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 94:7 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.