There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God.
Parallel Translations
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There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God.
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There is none that vnderstondith there is none that seketh after God
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There is none that vnderstandeth: there is none that seeketh God.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (23)
Passages linked to Romans 3:11 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Psalms 14:2-4 Yahweh looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who understood, who sought after God. They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don’t call on Yahweh?
- Psalms 53:2 God looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understood, who seek after God.
- Titus 3:3 For we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
- Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your God’s law, I will also forget your children.
- Romans 8:7 because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be.
- Hosea 7:10 The pride of Israel testifies to his face; yet they haven’t returned to Yahweh their God, nor sought him, for all this.
- Isaiah 31:1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they don’t look to the Holy One of Israel, and they don’t seek Yahweh!
- Isaiah 55:6 Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call on him while he is near.
- Isaiah 65:1 “I am inquired of by those who didn’t ask. I am found by those who didn’t seek me. I said, ‘See me, see me,’ to a nation that was not called by my name.
- Jeremiah 4:22 “For my people are foolish. They don’t know me. They are foolish children, and they have no understanding. They are skillful in doing evil, but they don’t know how to do good.”
- Proverbs 1:22 “How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? How long will mockers delight themselves in mockery, and fools hate knowledge?
- Proverbs 1:29-30 because they hated knowledge, and didn’t choose the fear of Yahweh. They wanted none of my counsel. They despised all my reproof.
- Matthew 13:19 When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom, and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes, and snatches away that which has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown by the roadside.
- 1 John 5:20 We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that we know him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
- Proverbs 1:7 The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge; but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.
- Isaiah 9:13 Yet the people have not turned to him who struck them, neither have they sought Yahweh of Armies.
- Matthew 13:13-14 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don’t see, and hearing, they don’t hear, neither do they understand. In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, ‘By hearing you will hear, and will in no way understand; Seeing you will see, and will in no way perceive:
- Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
- Job 21:15-16 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’ Behold, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
- Psalms 94:8 Consider, you senseless among the people; you fools, when will you be wise?
- Isaiah 27:11 When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off. The women will come and set them on fire, for they are a people of no understanding. Therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them, and he who formed them will show them no favor.
- Romans 1:28 Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
- Psalms 53:4 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don’t call on God?
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (11 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 11. The first effect is, that there is none…
11. The first effect is, that there is none that understands: and then this ignorance is immediately proved, for they seek not God; for empty is the man in whom there is not the knowledge of God, whatever other learning he may possess; yea, the sciences and the arts, which in themselves are good, are empty things, when they are without this groundwork.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none…
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
Ver. 11. None that seeketh] That seeketh and fetcheth him out of his retiring room, as she did, Mar 7:24-25.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain There is none that understandeth; a more particular proof…
There is none that understandeth; a more particular proof of the corruption of the soul, and the faculties thereof; and first of the mind, taken out of the forecited Psalms, which may be compared with the scriptures which speak of the ignorance and blindness of the mind, Deu 32:29; Job 32:9; Isa 1:3; Jer 4:22; 10:14.
There is none that seeketh after God; a proof of the corruption of the will, which follows also in the forecited Psalms.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain They are all gone out of the way,.... In…
They are all gone out of the way,.... In Psa 14:3; it is said, "they are all gone aside"; as persons in debt: man had a considerable stock of righteousness, holiness, knowledge, &c. but he has run through all, has contracted large and numerous debts, has been obliged to hide himself, has been used as a bankrupt, and turned out of house and home: Christ indeed has undertook to pay, and he has paid all the debts of his people; and has put them into a better state than ever Adam was in: in Psa 53:3, it is rendered, "everyone of them is gone back"; that is, from God; from his commands, and from their former state and condition: here the phrase is rendered by the apostle, "they are all gone out of the way": that is, out of the way of God and his precepts, out of the way of holiness and righteousness, of light and life; into their own ways, the ways of sin, Satan, and the world of darkness, and of death: so Aben Ezra explains it, "out of the right way"; Kimchi and Ben Melech paraphrase it, "out of the good way: and so"
they are together become unprofitable; the word in Psa 14:3 and Psa 53:3; is translated, "they are become filthy"; which R. Aben Ezra interprets by "they are corrupt"; and R. Solomon Jarchi by , "they are turned to corruption"; the metaphor is taken from stinking flesh, which is tainted and corrupted, and so good for nothing, hence here rendered "unprofitable"; for so men being corrupted by sin, are of no use, service, and advantage to God, to men, or to themselves; but, on the contrary, nauseous to God, and to all that are good, and hurtful to themselves and others: for
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there is none that does good, no, not one; and therefore must be unprofitable. There is none that can do good in a spiritual manner, without the grace of God, strength from Christ, and the assistance of the Spirit; and there is not even a spiritual man, that can do good perfectly, and without sin.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain There is none that understandeth - The things of…
There is none that understandeth - The things of God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain There is none that understandeth - In the Hebrew…
There is none that understandeth - In the Hebrew Psa 14:2, God is represented as looking down from heaven to see, that is, to make investigation, whether there were any that understood or sought after him. This circumstance gives not only high poetic beauty to the passage, but deep solemnity and awfulness. God, the searcher of hearts, is represented as making investigation on this very point. He looks down from heaven for this very purpose, to ascertain whether there were any righteous. In the Hebrew it is not asserted, though it is clearly and strongly implied, that none such were found. That fact the apostle “states.” If, as the result of such an investigation, none were found; if God did not specify that there were any such; then it follows that there were none. For none could escape the notice of his eye; and if there had been any, the benevolence of his heart would have led him to record it. To understand is used in the sense of being wise; or of having such a state of moral feeling as to dispose them to serve and obey God. The word is often used in the Bible, not to denote a mere intellectual operation of the mind, but the state of the heart inclining the mind to obey and worship God; Psa 107:43; Psa 119:27, Psa 119:100; Pro 5:5; Isa 6:10; “Lest they should understand with their heart,” etc.
That seeketh after God - That endeavors to know and do his will, and to be acquainted with his character. A disposition not to seek after God, that is, to neglect and forget him, is one of the most decided proofs of depravity. A righteous man counts it his highest privilege and honor to know God, and to understand his will. A man can indulge in wickedness only by forgetting God. Hence, a disposition “not” to seek God is full proof of depravity.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 11. Understandeth—The Old Testament speaks of wisdom, folly, and…
11. Understandeth—The Old Testament speaks of wisdom, folly, and understanding not so much from the intellectual as from the moral standpoint. To be wicked is to be a fool; to be righteous was to understand. So truly is the holy book the utterance of the moral sense.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 11. None that seeketh after God. A general statement…
11. None that seeketh after God. A general statement of the sinfulness of Jew as well as Gentile.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 11. “Neither does any one understand, neither is there…
11. “Neither does any one understand, neither is there any one who seeketh out God,” i. e., seeketh God till he finds Him. Hence the legitimate conclusion confirmatory of the utter impossibility that any one through water baptism, sacraments, church-rites, legal obedience and ecclesiastical loyalty can possibly ever reach a personal knowledge of God in the salvation of the soul, that being a personal enterprise on the part of the human spirit and the Holy Spirit, utterly independent of clerical, ritualistical or legalistic administrations.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain There is none that understandeth, There is none that…
There is none that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God ;
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 There is no one who understands
There is no one who understands
There is no one who understands what is right. AT: "No one really understands what is right" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
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There is no one who seeks after God
Here the phrase "seeks after God" means to have a relationship with God. AT: "No one sincerely tries to have a right relationship with God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
They have all turned away
This is an idiom that means the people do not even want to think about God. They want to avoid him. AT: "They have all turned away from God" (See: Idiom)
They together have become useless
Since no one does what is good, they are useless to God. AT: "Everyone has become useless to God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
God
turn
good
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.