As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one (Psalms 14:1-7. or 53.). Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they hays used deceit (Psalms 5:9); the poison of asps is under their lips (Psalms 140:3): whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness (Psalms 10:7): their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known (Proverbs 1:16 and Isaiah 59:7): there is no fear of God before their eyes (Psalms 36:1). These texts are from various unconnected passages of the Old Testament, quoted from the LXX., though not all accurately. They seem to be put together from memory by way of showing the general scriptural view of human depravity. It may be said that they do not establish the apostle's position of all men being guilty; for that they are for the most part rhetorical rather than dogmatic, that most of them refer only to certain classes of men, and that the righteous are spoken of too, and this in the sequence of even the most sweeping of them all (that from Psalms 14:1-7. or lift.), which does, literally understood, assert universal sinfulness. Any such objection to the cogency of the quotations may be met by regarding them as adduced, not as rigid proofs, but as only generally confirmatory of the apostle's position. See, he would say to the Jew, the picture your own Scriptures give you; observe their continued testimony to human depravity: and the main point of all the quotations is that which is brought out in the next verse, viz. that they had reference, not to the Gentile world, but to the chosen people themselves.
Now we know that what things soever the Law ( ὁ νόμος here for the Old Testament generally as the embodiment and exponent of the Law) saith, it speaketh to them that are under the Law (not to the world outside, but to those within its own sphere): that every mouth (the Jew's as well as the Gentile's) may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Because by works of law ( νόμος here suitably without the article; see on Romans 2:13) shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through law is knowledge of sin. In this concluding verse the apostle briefly intimates the reason of law's inefficacy for justification, anticipating, after a manner usual with him, what is afterwards to be more fully set forth, as especially in Romans 7:1-25. The reason is that law in itself only defines sin and makes it sinful, but does not emancipate from it.