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Psalm 139

The Inescapable God

To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.

1

O L ord, you have searched me and known me.

2

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

3

You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

4

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O L ord, you know it completely.

5

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

6

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

 

7

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

8

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,”

12

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

 

13

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

15

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.

17

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18

I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

I come to the end—I am still with you.

 

19

O that you would kill the wicked, O God,

and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—

20

those who speak of you maliciously,

and lift themselves up against you for evil!

21

Do I not hate those who hate you, O L ord?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

22

I hate them with perfect hatred;

I count them my enemies.

23

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my thoughts.

24

See if there is any wicked way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.


16. Thine eyes beheld my shapelessness, etc. The embryo, when first conceived in the womb, has no form; and David speaks of God’s having known him when he was yet a shapeless mass, τὸ κύημα, as the Greeks term it; for τὸ εμβρυον is the name given to the foetus from the time of conception to birth inclusive. The argument is from the greater’ to the less. If he was known to God before he had grown to certain definite shape, much less could he now elude his observation. He adds, that all things were written in his book; that is, the whole method of his formation was well known to God. The term book is a figure taken from the practice common amongst men of helping their memory by means of books and commentaries. Whatever is an object of God’s knowledge he is said to have registered in writing, for he needs no helps to memory. Interpreters are not agreed as to the second clause. Some read ימים, yamim, in the nominative case, when days were made; the sense being, according to them — All my bones were written in thy book, O God! from the beginning of the world, when days were first formed by thee, and when as yet none of them actually existed. The other is the more natural meaning, That the different parts of the human body are formed in a succession of time; for in the first germ there is no arrangement of parts, or proportion of members, but it is developed, and takes its peculiar form progressively. 216216     “They (my members) have been daily formed, or forming. They were not formed at once, but gradually; each day increasing in strength and size. This expression is probably parenthetical, so that the last words of the verse will refer to the writing of those things previously mentioned in God’s register.” — Phillips. There is another point on which interpreters differ. As in the particle לא, lo, the א, aleph, is often interchangeable with ו vau; some read לו, to him, and others לא not. According to the first reading, the sense is, that though the body is formed progressively, it was always one and the same in God’s book, who is not dependent upon time for the execution of his work. A sufficiently good meaning, however, can be got by adhering’ without change to the negative particle, namely, that though the members were formed in the course of days, or gradually, none of them had existed; no order or distinctness of parts having been there at first, but a formless substance. And thus our admiration is directed to the providence of God in gradually giving’ shape and beauty to a confused mass. 217217     “The meaning is,” says Warner, “there was a time when none of those curious parts, of which my form consists, existed. The germ of them all was planted by thee in the first instance; and gradually matured, by thy power, wisdom, and goodness, into that wonderful piece of mechanism which the human form exhibits.” Phillips gives a different turn to the clause: “And not one of them, or among them, was omitted. Not one of the particulars concerning my formation has been left out of thy record.”


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