John Calvin Commentary Psalms 94:8

"Consider, ye brutish among the people; And ye fools, when will ye be wise?" — Psalms 94:8 (ASV)

Understand, you stupid among the people. Since it was execrable impiety to deny God to be Judge of the earth, the Psalmist severely reprimands their folly in thinking to elude his government, and even succeed by schemes in escaping his view. The expression, stupid among the people, is stronger than if he had simply condemned them as foolish. It rendered their folly more inexcusable, because they belonged to the posterity of Abraham, of whom Moses said,

“What people is there so great, who have their gods so near to them, as the Lord your God has this day come down to you? For this is your understanding and wisdom before all nations, to have God for your legislator.” (Deuteronomy 4:7)

Perhaps, however, he may be considered as addressing the rulers and those who were of higher rank in the community, and styling them degraded among the people—that is, no better than the common crowd. Proud men, who are apt to be blinded by a sense of their importance, require to be brought down and made to see that in God’s estimation they are no better than others.

He puts them on a level with the common people to humble their self-complacency. Or we may suppose that he hints, with an ironical and sarcastic allusion to their boasted greatness, that they were distinguished above others chiefly for pre-eminent folly—adding, at the same time, as an additional aggravation, that they were obstinate in their adherence to it. For this is implied in the question, When will you be wise?

We might consider it an unnecessary assertion of Divine Providence to put the question to the wicked, Shall not he who made the ear hear? because there are none so abandoned as to openly deny God’s cognizance of events. But, as I have observed above, the flagrant audacity and self-security which most men display in contradicting his will is a sufficient proof that they have supplanted God from their imaginations and substituted a mere dead idol in his place. For if they truly believed him to be cognizant of their actions, they would at least show as much regard to him as to their fellow creatures, in whose presence they feel some measure of restraint and are prevented from sinning by fear and respect.

To arouse them from this stupidity, the Psalmist draws an argument from the very order of nature, inferring that if men both see and hear by virtue of faculties they have received from God the Creator, it is impossible that God himself, who formed the eye and the ear, should not possess the most perfect observation.