Our English word fool comes from a Latin word that means “bellows,” suggesting that the fool is a person “full of hot air.” In the Hebrew language, there are three basic words for “fool”: kesyl, the dull, stupid fool; ewiyl, the unreasonable and perverted fool; and nabal, the brutish person who is like a stubborn animal. Nabal is the word used in 14:1, and it was the name of a man who was brutish and refused to help David (1 Sam. 25). People who say “There is no God” are not necessarily lacking normal intelligence; in fact, they may have good minds. However, they lack spiritual wisdom and insight. The nabal fool has a moral problem in the heart, not a mental problem in the head. The American evangelist Billy Sunday used to say that sinners can’t find God for the same reason criminals can’t find policemen—they aren’t looking!
Nabal fools are self-righteous and don’t need or want God. They want to live their own lives the way they please. Their problem is willful ignorance and not lack of normal intelligence (2 Peter 3:5; Rom. 1:18–28). But this decision causes sad consequences in both their character and their conduct. By leaving God out of their lives, they cause their inner person to become more and more corrupt—the heart (v. 1), the mind (vv. 2, 4), and the will (v. 3). The Hebrew word means “rotten, putrid, decayed.” It is used to describe Jeremiah’s useless sash (Jer. 13:7). When God looks down to investigate (Gen. 6:5, 11–12; 11:15; 18:21), He sees people who are filthy (v. 3), a word that describes milk that has become rancid. “Gone aside” means they have turned their backs on God (Jer. 2:21) and refuse to fulfill the purpose for which they were created—to glorify God.
This indictment is universal: all people, individually or all together, cannot do anything at all that is good enough to merit heaven—no one, no, not one. Paul quotes from this passage in Romans 3 as part of his proof that the whole world is guilty before God and can be saved only by the grace of God as revealed in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:9–26). Human depravity doesn’t mean that all persons are as wicked as they can be, or that all are equally bad, or that no man or woman can ever do anything good (Luke 11:13). It simply means that all have a fallen nature they cannot change, and that apart from the grace of God, none can be saved from eternal judgment.