This Psalm gives us the solitary musing of a godly soul over the atheism of the world. He recites God’s verdict (Psa. 14:3-4) upon man after making a solemn inquisition (such as he made of old at Babel and at Sodom, Gen. 11:5; 18:21)—then anticipates the confusion of the children of men, when God shows Himself in the midst of His generation (thus morally opposed to the generation of Psa. 12:7-8), and closes with uttering a desire for that occasion.
The “willful king” of the last days is surely contemplated in “the fool” or atheist of this Psalm; for the confederacy which he heads is to be broken up when the salvation here anticipated comes out of Zion. But man is man. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” And thus the Apostle can quote this Psalm, when describing men in Romans 3. All of us by nature have the mind of “the willful one,” or the atheist—alienated from the life of God (Eph. 4).
Thus, while this is the meditation of either Jesus or His Remnant looking on the infidel of the last days, every instructed soul may use it. (See Psa. 53.) Indeed, the language of Psalm 14:3 in the Septuagint is used by the Apostle in Romans 3:11-18.