Bible Strands
Psalms 73:11
The wicked say, “How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge?”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist reports that the arrogant wicked, observing their own unchecked prosperity, voice their doubts aloud to the surrounding community. They question divine awareness at a moment when their material success appears to contradict moral accountability.
The words — The Hebrew phrase אֵיכָה יָדַע אֵל (’ei-khah ya-da‘ ’El) translates literally as “how does God know?” while בְּעֶלְיוֹן דָּעָה (bə-‘elyôn da‘â) asks if knowledge exists with the Most High. These terms directly challenge the scope and accessibility of divine perception.
The thread — This rhetorical denial of divine oversight appears in Job 22:13 and Hosea 7:2, where complacent sinners similarly minimize God’s memory and judgment. Zephaniah 1:12 records God’s response to such self-deception by promising to search the complacent with lamps.
Why it lands — The verse demands a reader to confront the temptation to equate temporal prosperity with moral immunity. It requires acknowledging that divine knowledge operates independently of human circumstances or visible justice.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?
Cross-references
- Hosea 7:2 But they fail to consider in their hearts that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds are all around them; they are before My face.
- Zephaniah 1:12 And at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish the men settled in complacency, who say to themselves, ‘The LORD will do nothing, either good or bad.’
- Job 22:13 Yet you say: ‘What does God know? Does He judge through thick darkness?
- Psalms 73:9 They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongues strut across the earth.
- Psalms 94:7 They say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.”
- Ezekiel 8:12 “Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are saying, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’”
- Psalms 10:11 He says to himself, “God has forgotten; He hides His face and never sees.”
- Psalms 44:21 would not God have discovered, since He knows the secrets of the heart?
- Psalms 139:1 For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. O LORD, You have searched me and known me.