Psalm 139
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.
O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me,and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men. For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.There is nothing more practical for Christian living than sound orthodoxy. Understanding doctrine with the heart defines duty; right thinking determines right behavior. This is the biblical pattern and formula for life.
Psalm 139 is a classic example of theology in practice. It provides a paradigm for bringing the deep and lofty truths about God to bear on the daily issues of life. The psalmist did not regard these truths as philosophical abstractions or religious theories. On the contrary, he personalized the truths in such a way that what he knew about God affected his thinking and behavior, shredding every sense of self-reliance or independence. He realized that the Lord knew all his thoughts and actions, that God had fashioned his existence and so ordered his life that escape from the divine presence was impossible. Meditating on these profound truths caused him to yield himself increasingly to God’s control and guidance. Knowing and submitting to truth is the ideal for Christian living.
The very structure of the psalm suggests David’s obedient submission to known truth. The beginning (v. 1) and the end (vv. 23-24) form an inclusio. Inclusio or inclusion is a literary device where the beginning and end repeat the same thought either verbally or thematically. It is a common technique in Hebrew literature to mark thematic units or boundaries of thought. But even apart from the literary artistry, here it communicates a significant application of theology. It is an indisputable and unconditional fact that God searches and knows (v. 1). Yet, David prays that God would search and know him (v. 23). The simple fact of the matter is that God would do that without David’s prayer; so David prays that God would do what He would do anyway. This is not fatalistic resignation that “what will be will be”; it is living by faith. Because he knew what God was like and what God does, nothing was more important than being right with God and conforming to God’s will. Knowing God made him conscious of his own insufficiency and led him to pray for divine leadership in the way everlasting (v. 24). The inclusio sets the tone for the entire psalm and suggests the theme for exposition: truth about God must affect life. What we know about God must fuel within our hearts an ever-increasing desire to be what we ought to be. In four stanzas, David highlights four points of theology that illustrate the importance of factoring God into life. It is imperative that every believer should personalize these truths; each stanza links God and me. When I write “me,” I mean me, but when you read “me,” it means you. These truths apply to us all.
The Omniscience Of God: He Knows Me Perfectly
Omniscience designates God’s infinite knowledge of all things. Nothing is outside the circle of His knowledge, not even me. Factoring God’s infinite knowledge into life has significant practical implications. Verses 1-6 highlight three propositions regarding God’s omniscience that deserve consideration.
First, God’s knowledge is thorough (v. 1). Verse 1 has only three words in Hebrew, but they make the point clearly. The verb “to search” occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament, referencing spying out the land, prospecting for treasure, and investigating matters in preparation for a legal suit. Spies diligently seek to discover everything they can about an enemy enclave in order to formulate the best strategy for invasion. Treasure hunters leave no stones unturned in their quest for wealth. Prosecutors pore over every shred of evidence they can gather to insure the desired verdict. And with that kind of resolute thoroughness, God searched David. But not just him; Jeremiah uses the same word with serious implications: “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give to every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jer. 17:10). Of course, God does not have to search or investigate in order to know something; His infinite knowledge is immediate. He never has to find anything out. But His searching is a vivid analogy to underscore the totality with which He knows us. There is absolutely nothing about us He does not know.
The verb “to know” sums up the matter. Although this is the general word referring to mere apprehension or the ability to understand, it can designate a special relationship between the subject and object—an intimate, discerning, discriminating, and relational knowledge. God’s omniscience means that He knows everything, but there is a unique way that He knows His people. Psalm 1:6 illustrates this: “For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” The Lord is aware of the way of the ungodly as much as He is of the way of the righteous, but His intimate, caring, and special knowledge safeguards the way of the righteous whereas the absence of that knowledge causes the way of the ungodly to come to ruin and frustration. Although there is something fearful about being known by God, there is also something quite reassuring for those who know Him.
Second, God’s knowledge is inclusive (vv. 2-4). By using an emphatic construction (“you yourself know”), David declares that this all-inclusive knowledge is exclusive: only God knows this way. A literary device called merismus implies the inclusiveness of divine knowledge. Merismus employs polar or opposite expressions to designate totality; here, “my downsitting” is set against “my uprising.” David is not saying that God knows just my “downs” and “ups,” but everything in between as well. There is no activity excluded from divine sight. The infinity of God’s inclusive language is suggested by His understanding “thought afar off” (v. 2). Even private and secret thoughts, desires, and aims are part of God’s knowledge. So extensive is His knowledge that He knows those thoughts before they enter our minds. The word “afar off” can have both spatial and temporal reference, but here the temporal idea is in view. It is not just that God knows our thoughts on earth from His distant heavenly abode, though that would itself be remarkable. But rather, He knows them long before we think them. His knowledge is immediate; He knows all there is to know in His eternal “now.”
Verses 3 and 4 further the notion of God’s extensive and inclusive knowledge with sobering implications. The reference to path (literally, my wanderings) and lying down is another example of merismus, which would designate the totality of experience. God compasses the whole of life. The Hebrew word translated “compassest” means to measure, to winnow, or to sift. It is a word of discriminating discernment. God’s knowledge is never passive but involves active evaluation, and that discerning knowledge extends to every word, whether public or private, whether voiced or under the breath. It is sobering enough to know that God knows all, but to know that He infallibly evaluates everything according to His absolute standard of judgment should be at the least thought-provoking—and at best, life-changing.
Third, God’s knowledge is overwhelming (vv. 5-6). At this point, David factors the Lord into his life and confesses his awe and wonder. David acknowledges that God has encircled him (“beset”), shutting him and everything about him into the circle of infinite knowledge. Nothing is hid from God or outside the sphere of that infinite yet minute knowledge. He estimates that truth to be too wonderful—beyond comprehension—and so high like a fortress wall that cannot be scaled. Although David does not spell out the application of this truth explicitly, the implications should be obvious. Such knowledge ought to engender reverence for God, a key component of fearing the Lord that flows from knowing Him as He reveals Himself. It should generate confidence, knowing that God is not blind or oblivious to our lot in life with all its cares and concerns. It should produce careful conduct, being consciously aware of God’s being discerningly aware of us.
The Omnipresence Of God: He Is With Me Constantly
Omnipresence refers to God’s infinity in relationship to space. God is not bound to a place; spatial limitation does not apply to Him. Although heaven is His throne and earth His footstool (Acts 7:49), Solomon recognized something of God’s infinity when he acclaimed, “[T]he heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee” (1 Kings 8:27). In this second stanza (vv. 7-12), David personalizes this remarkable truth that God is everywhere at once.
First, God’s presence is universal (vv. 8-9, 11-12). This proposition is expressed by a series of polar expressions used to designate totality (merismus). In verse 8, the contrast is between high and low. That heaven and hell are opposites is obvious. Indeed, heaven can refer to that special abode of God’s presence—the place of His throne, the heavenly host, and the spirits of just men. And hell can refer to the abode of departed wicked spirits—the place of torment and punishment. But these terms occur in the Old Testament in senses other than what immediately comes to mind. The Hebrew word translated “hell” is sheol, and it has three distinct senses. It can refer to death (in the abstract as the absence of life), the grave (the place where the body corrupts), or the abode of wicked spirits (place of punishment in the intermediate state). But when sheol is designated as a location, it is frequently associated with a downward or low direction. Heaven, on the other hand, is always viewed upward. In this poetic statement, David is playing on those locative associations rather than referring to actual places. Very simply, he says, “no matter how high I go or how low I go, God is there.” If God is at the highest height and at the lowest depth; He is everywhere between as well.
The second contrast expressing God’s universal presence is between east and west (v. 9). The “wings of the morning” designates the east, where the sun would rise, and the “uttermost parts of the sea” designates the west, the Mediterranean where the sun would set from the perspective of Palestine. East and west commonly express great distances. Although the distance is great, there is a point where north transitions to south and south to north. But east and west never meet. So wherever David would travel in those never-converging directions, God was there.
The third contrast is between light and darkness (vv. 11-12). In one sense, the contrast is still between east and west but with even greater vividness. Darkness is nonexistent with God. Since God is light, “the darkness and light are both alike” to Him. Consequently, when David thought he was secluded in the night, he found God’s presence to be light around him. Whether high or low, whether near or far, whether here or there, God is present. The implications of this universal presence lead to the next proposition.
Second, God’s presence is inescapable (v. 7). The rhetorical questions “where can I walk” and “where can I run away” do not imply the psalmist’s desire to evade God’s Spirit and face. Rather, the questions point to the outright impossibility of escaping the divine presence. The inferred answer “nowhere” puts in bold that far-reaching deduction from the facts. The inability to be absent from God needs to be factored into life. God’s omnipresence bears directly on my presence in two significant ways.
On the one hand, God’s presence should be a cause for comfort and confidence. Although His presence is universal, there is a unique and special manifestation of His presence that should be the experience of every believer—the enjoyment of Immanuel (“God with us”). That He will never leave nor forsake His people is an indescribable blessing. Conscious awareness of His presence even through the dark and dangerous places of life can generate a fearlessness that defies natural understanding. The darkness that can be so fearful to us is nonexistent to Him; so our awareness of His presence should dispel both the darkness and the fear that normally comes with it (see Ps. 23:4).
On the other hand, God’s presence is a warning and incentive for purity. It is sobering to realize that every sin is committed right in God’s face. What an insult to His holiness! The darkness, which sinners so much love because they assume it hides their sin, does not exist for God. He sees every sin as if in the bright of day. If that reality sinks into the soul, it must bear heavily on every sphere of life.
Third, God’s presence is good (v. 10). To His people, God’s presence is always beneficial, whether to calm their anxieties or keep them from sin. Regardless of how remote, isolated, or desolated the places His people may be, the Lord’s hand is right there to lead. Interestingly, the word “lead” here is the same as in Psalm 23, where the Good Shepherd leads His sheep to places of refreshment, renewal, and rest. It is a pastoral word that paints the picture of tender yet firm care and guidance. The parallel line heightens the sense of both the tenderness and firmness. The hand speaks of active power, but the right hand specifically is associated with special favor—that’s the tenderness. The word “hold” has the notion of grasping or holding fast to something—here’s the firmness. On the one hand, it suggests the security resulting from the Lord’s strong hold; on the other hand, it suggests something of the resistance and struggle His people sometimes exert against His leading, but the Lord has the power to subdue us to a happy and submissive following of His providential leading. The point is that God is constantly with us, so we might as well live like He is.
The Omnificence Of God: He Owns Me Completely
Omnificence is not a common word, and indeed some dictionaries do not list it among their entries. But it is a fitting word to head this third stanza (vv. 13-18) of David’s hymn of practical and applied theology. It means great creative power and designates precisely the theme of the stanza. That God is the Creator testifies to His absolute power, total authority, and complete ownership of all He created. Creation is a uniquely divine work; it is basic theology with far-reaching implications. David sums up the personal significance of this fundamental doctrine with three thoughts.
First, my design was in the mind of God (vv. 13, 15). God made me on purpose and by design, and it is therefore folly to question or disagree with that purpose. Verse 13 includes the key thoughts developed in this section: creatorship and ownership. The verb “possessed” (qnh) conveys the idea of acquiring or possessing and also implies the sense of creating. It is not the principal or technical word for “create” in the Old Testament (br’), which is uniquely limited to divine agency, but it does link creation with its necessary corollary of ownership. What God creates belongs to Him. He has made and owns “my reins,” a reference to the kidneys, specifically, and by synecdoche (a figure of speech where a part of something designates the whole of something), it refers to the entirety of the inner being and by extension to the entirety of the person. But the parallel line particularly suggests the purposeful design God devised and employed in putting me together: “thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” The word “covered” literally means to shape or weave together by intricate and detailed craftsmanship. My existence, therefore, is not the consequence of some biological or chemical reaction; it is the artistry of divine activity.
Verse 15 expresses the same truth. Although my formation was hidden from natural sight, God was directly involved even though it occurred in “the lowest parts of the earth.” This is an example of a genitive of apposition; in other words, it is simply saying that the earth itself is the low place. So even though God is in the highest of heavens and I am on the earth so far below Him, He is the direct Agent of my being. But it is the word translated “curiously wrought” (rqm) that draws thought to the divine design of my being. This word refers to the exquisite needlework of an embroiderer who skillfully decorates a piece of cloth or garment with colorful patterns. It is used to describe the artistry of the tabernacle tapestries as well as the garments of the high priest that were designed for beauty and glory (Ex. 27:16; 28:39). Similarly, all the details of my being were worked together with skill and for beauty.
When God made me, He did a fine job. With His infinite wisdom and creative power and skill, He made us all the way He wanted us to be. We are all different, and we ought to be able to admire the beauty of God’s creation when we see others. But admiring God’s skill in creating someone else should not cause resentment that God did not make us the same way. We are all His creation and should join all the never-complaining creation in declaring His glory (Ps. 19:1).
Second, the execution of the design is in the hand of God (v. 16). The Hebrew of verse 16 is a bit terse, but the sense is clear. Here is a loose but I think accurate rendering: “Thy eyes saw my formlessness; all the days ordained for me were written in Thy book before one of them came to be.” God saw me before there was anything of me to see, and what He determined before my existence He executes according to His ordained purpose. My life is no accident, neither its appearance nor its course. The Almighty Creator, because He made me, owns the prerogative to set my circumstances and thus has predetermined each day of life with all of its history. David expressed this same truth elsewhere: “My times are in thy hand” (Ps. 31:15). Similarly, Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 details all the times of life that God has purposed and concludes that God has made all those times beautiful or appropriate to the ultimate aim that men “should fear before him.” According to Ecclesiastes 7:14, God juxtaposes days of prosperity with days of adversity to increase our sense of dependence on Him. The truth that God has written all my days in His book before they happened is not cause for resignation to a “what will be will be” fatalism. Fatalism is paganism and has no place in Christian thinking. Rather, this truth is reason for active trust and assurance that all is moving to the divinely ordered end determined by an infinitely wise, powerful, and good God. There is no better place for my times to be than in His hand.
Third, the wonder of the design warrants praise (vv. 14, 17, 18). Verse 14 begins with the affirmation of praise, an expression of gratitude and adoration. The reason for David’s resolution to praise the Lord is his awe, wonder, and amazement over the thought of God making him. He was made “fearfully and wonderfully,” terms referring to something extraordinary and beyond comprehension. So overwhelmed was David that he extended his amazement to God’s works in general: “marvelous (same root word as ‘wonderfully’) are thy works.” Everything God does defies human understanding and explanation. For the creature to comprehend the Creator is impossible.
In verse 17, the psalmist acknowledges that God’s thoughts, His aims and purposes, are “precious,” a word meaning either to be difficult or to be highly esteemed. Either sense is appropriate here. To estimate or attempt to calculate the totality of God’s design is futile since the sum exceeds the innumerable grains of sand (v. 18). To count something is to define its limits; that is impossible when God or His works are being considered. But getting lost in the count is part of the praise; it means we are thinking about Him. Verse 18 suggests that David’s last thought in the evening and his first thought in the morning were of the Lord. He was factoring God into all his thoughts even though there was so much beyond his knowledge. Faith is never limited by how little is known about God, but it is strengthened by how much it rests and rejoices in the incomprehensible God. Contributing to the confidence of faith should be the fact that God has made us according to His sovereign design and we belong to Him. That is quite an overwhelming thought.
The Objectivity Of God: He Demands My Loyalty
God is absolutely objective in His dealings with those He has created. “The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’s throne is in the heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men” (Ps. 11:4). In the same psalm, David declares that “the righteous LORD loveth righteousness” (v. 7) and also that “the wicked…his soul hateth” (v. 5). This is God’s unchanging, impartial, and objective justice: the wicked are condemned. In this final stanza (vv. 19-24), the psalmist makes one doctrinal assertion and then factors the truth into his life in two remarkable ways. The assertion is simply that God will slay the wicked (v. 19), an indisputable and objectively certain fact that demands loyalty to God.
First, loyalty to God requires separating from the wicked (vv. 19-22). Separating from those under the sentence of death is the sensible thing to do. Since God will slay the wicked, David tells the “bloody men” to depart from him. The reference is literally to “men of bloods.” In Hebrew, the plural of blood is always blood outside the veins and frequently refers to blood-guiltiness (murder) and then by extension to guilt regardless of the cause. So in other words, the bloody men are the wicked in the preceding line, those who are guilty before the righteous God. Verse 20 identifies them specifically as adversaries who speak wicked and worthless emptiness and vanity against God.
Not only does David express his desire to be separated from them, he affirms his loyalty to God by taking sides with God against the wicked. He hates those who hate God with a total hatred and counts God’s enemies to be his own (vv. 21-22). In Hebrew, “to hate” is primarily a volitional rather than emotional word. He rejects those who reject God. To be overwhelmed with God and to factor Him into life means that there will be intolerance of sin both in others and in self. Significantly, this love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness was a mark of the coming Messiah (see Ps. 45:7), and so this expression of loyalty to God is part of our being conformed to the image of Christ, a key component in God’s wondrous design for all His people.
Second, loyalty to God requires conforming to His will (vv. 23-24). Knowing what we know about God, our enjoyment of Him will be in proportion to our rejection of sin, not just in others but also in ourselves. Thus David prays to be delivered from any self-deception and welcomes the divine scrutiny that will reveal any wicked way. I have already addressed the significance of these closing verses to the opening verse; in essence, the prayer is simply for God’s will to be done. Thus David comes full circle as he applies the deep doctrines of God to his personal experience.
Orthodox doctrine is designed to be experiential. God does not reveal glorious truths about Himself just to satisfy religious curiosity or intellectual speculation. Truth must affect life. God is real, and that ultimate reality must translate into life as a transforming power. Living in the reality of God is the essence of fearing God, and this is the transparent message of Psalm 139 with its lessons about God and me. Fearing God factors Him into life. That is the kind of life that pleases Him, for “the Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him” (Ps. 145:11). Fearing God is the operation of our entire being. In the head, we know Him. With the heart, we worship Him. Through the hands, we serve Him obediently.
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