Psalms 139
ButlerBlessed, indeed, is his lot over whom, regenerate, loving, and grateful, is heard the Father’s assurance: All things are yours. All things shall work together for thy good. Nothing shall be able to separate thee from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. The earth, with all its adornments, treasures, and privileges, may well be dear as thy Father’s work and as one of the outlying fields to His heavenly home. But in addition to a share of His bounties here there awaits thee a better portion hereafter and in the world beyond. W. R. Williams.
Nothing is lost. Patient waitings, cheerful sacrifices, still-born plans and baffled hopes, are all remembered. God gathers up and will fulfil in His best way. Life is what character has made it; it depends on the decision we make between the claims of the seen and the unseen worlds, pleasure and duty, inclination and principle. Truth is but a means to an end, and knowledge is to be translated into character. The unseen spiritual realm is to be our daily dwelling-place. Turn your eye to Christ, and in His light discover the lines of your destiny. He came to minister and not to be ministered to; to give rather than to receive. Take His burden and yoke. Keep Him in view amid the glamour and mirage of life, as an Alpine peak rises at evening in tender beauty and clear glory, when darkness has deepened about its base. It is morning now, but the night cometh, when the shadows will fall. Then let the glory of the cross shine full and clear before your eye, and nothing remain between you and heaven. V
1. O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
2. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off.
3. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways.
4. For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
5. Thou hast beset me behind and before, And laid thine hand upon me.
6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain unto it.
7. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.
9. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 10 Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
11. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, Then the night shall be light about me;
12. Even the darkness hideth not from thee, But the night shineth as the day: The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
13. For thou didst form my reins: Thou hast knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14. I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well.
15. My frame was not hidden from thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16. Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance, And in thy book were all my members written,
Which day by day were fashioned,
When as yet there was none of them.
17. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand:
When I awake, I am still with thee.
19. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God:
Depart from me therefore, ye bloodthirsty men.
20. For they speak against thee wickedly,
THIS remarkable Psalm has been justly admired in all ages for its view of the spiritual nature and perfections of God, especially of His omniscience and omnipresence. Noticeably, these are thought of and presented here, not in their abstract nature and relations, but in their personal relations and bearings upon “me,” the writer, and myself—each singer and reader of this Psalm. The God of David, the God of the ancient Hebrew worship, was no mere abstraction, no impersonal universality, to be thought of only as infinitely distant and infinitely regardless of man or of man’s moral life and real welfare. The Psalm before us is a lesson on these points. Though ascribed to David, its style, choice of words and the peculiar sense sometimes given them are thought to indicate strongly the age of the restoration. The basis of the Psalm being David’s, it may have been modified in these respects by those who in the age of Ezra revised it for greater practical usefulness. C.
The one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm is a composition among the most remarkable in the collection; fraught with the loftiest conceptions of God, breathing profound and ardent devotion, uniting the most awakening thoughts with the most finished outward form, winged for the highest flight of the imagination, and yet conveying impressive practical lessons—a favorite hymn in the past ages of the Jewish and Christian churches, and furnishing the germ of some of the most sublime lyric poems in all Christian languages. B. B. E.
Nowhere are the great attributes of God—His omniscience, His omnipresence, His omnipotence—set forth so strikingly as they are in this magnificent Psalm. Nowhere is there a more overwhelming sense of the fact that man is beset and compassed about by God, pervaded by His Spirit, unable to take a step without His control; and yet nowhere is there a more em-
And thine enemies take thy name in vain.
21. Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee?
And do not I loathe those that rise up against thee?
22. I hate them with perfect hatred:
I count them mine enemies.
23. Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts:
24. And see if there be any way of wickedness in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
phatic assertion of the personality of man as distinct from, not absorbed in the Deity. Man is here the workmanship of God, and stands in the presence and under the eye of One who is his Judge. The power of conscience, the sense of sin and of responsibility, are felt and acknowledged, and prayer is offered to One who is not only the Judge, but the Friend; to One who is feared as none else are feared, who is loved as none else are loved. Both in loftiness of thought and in expressive beauty of language the Psalm stands pre-eminent, and it is not surprising that Aben-Ezra should have pronounced it to be “the crown of all the Psalms.”
The Psalm both in the Hebrew and the LXX is ascribed to David. In some copies of the latter it is also said to be a Psalm of Zechariah, with the further addition by a second hand of the words, “In the dispersion,” which Origen tells us he found in some manuscripts. Theodoret, on the other hand, says that he had not found the addition either in the Hebrew or the LXX, or in any of the other interpreters. The strongly Aramaic coloring of the language certainly makes it more probable that the Psalm was written after the exile than before, unless, indeed, this tendency to Aramaisms is to be regarded as evidence of a variation merely of dialect, perhaps the dialect of Northern Palestine—a supposition which seems not to be wholly without foundation. The rhythmical structure is, on the whole, regular. There are four strophes, each consisting of six verses; the first three strophes containing the proper theme of the Psalm, and the last the expression of individual feeling. In the first strophe the poet dwells on the omniscience of God, as manifested in His knowledge of the deepest thoughts and most secret workings of the human heart (vs. 1-6). In the second, on His omnipresence; inasmuch as there is no corner of the universe so remote that it is not pervaded by God’s presence, no darkness so deep that it can hide from His eyes (vs. 7-12). The third strophe gives the reason for the profound conviction of these truths of which the poet’s heart is full. No wonder that God should have so intimate a knowledge of man, for man is the creature of God, the mysterious beginnings of life, which none can trace; the days, all of which are ordered before the first breath is drawn—these are fashioned and ordered by the hand of God (vs. 13-18). In the last strophe the Psalmist turns abruptly aside to express his utter abhorrence of wicked men—an abhorrence, no doubt, deepened by the previous meditation on God and His attributes, and called forth probably by the circumstances in which he was placed; and then closes with a prayer that he himself may, in his inmost heart, be right with that God who has searched him and known him and laid His hand upon him, and that he may be led by Him in the way everlasting (vs. 19-24). P.
1-4. The opening verses assert the most comprehensive and exact knowledge of the individual man in all the conditions and activities of his outer and inner life. De Witt.
2. Thou knowest my sitting and my rising; Thou understandest as to my thought from afar. Sitting and rising or standing represent rest and motion, or all the various conditions of the living, waking man. In every posture, state, and occupation, Thou knowest me. The next phrase does not merely signify, Thou perceivest the meaning of my thought, but Thou knowest all about it—its origin, its tendency, its moral quality; Thou understandest (everything) respecting it. From afar, unimpeded by local distance, by which men are prone to imagine the Divine omniscience to be circumscribed. A.
Thou understandest my thought afar off—that is, every thought, though innumerable thoughts pass through me in a day. The Divine knowledge reaches to their source and fountain before they are our thoughts. Charnock.—In all affliction, in all business, a man’s best comfort is this, that all he does and even all he thinks, God knows. In the Septuagint we read “reasonings.” God knows all our inner reasoning, all the colloquies of the soul with itself. Le Blanc.
3. My path and my lair Thou siftest, and with all my ways art acquainted. Path is here put for going, lair for lying, and these, like the terms of the preceding verse, for motion and rest, or the active and passive parts of human life. The poetical word lair is used to represent a Hebrew one, occurring only here, but the verbal root of which is used by Moses (Lev. 18 : 23 ; 20 : 16). The last verb means to be accustomed, and then by a natural association acquainted or familiar. My ways, my condition and my conduct, what I do and what I suffer. A.
3,4. God takes notice of every step we take, every right step and every by-step. He is acquainted with all our ways; He knows what rule we walk by, what end we walk toward, what company we walk with. Thou knowest me in all my retirements; Thou knowest my lying down; when I am withdrawn from all company, and am reflecting upon what has passed all day, and composing myself to rest. There is not a word in my tongue, not a vain word, not a good word, but Thou knowest it altogether; knowest what it meant, from what thought it came, and with what design it was uttered. There is not a word at my tongue’s end, ready to be spoken yet checked and kept in, but Thou knowest it. H.
God knows everything that passes in our inmost souls better than we do ourselves; He reads our most secret thoughts; and He is as perfectly employed in the scrutiny of the thoughts and actions of an individual, as in the regulation of the most important concerns of the universe. God knows everything perfectly, and He knows everything perfectly at once. This, to a human understanding, would breed confusion; but God, without confusion, beholds as distinctly the actions of every man, as if that man were the only created being, and the Godhead were solely employed in observing him. Henry Kirke White.—Would men speak so vainly if they considered God overheard them? Latimer took heed to every word in his examination when he heard the pen go behind the hangings; so, what care would persons have of their words if they remembered God heard, and the pen is going in heaven! Watson.
Do we sufficiently think what is meant by the proposition, God knows us? It cannot be perfect knowledge, an all knowing of all that we are, unless there be an ever-present spiritual beholding, a constant, actual knowing of our knowledge, and thinking of our thoughts. It is an idea most precious as well as fearful! Who is so unthinking as not to be sometimes impressed with that great mystery of our spiritual being, his own utter isolation from an all-surrounding universe? How perfect the seclusion in which every individual finite soul dwells apart from every other! We do, indeed, hold an imperfect intercourse by telegraphic signals passing through matter, but walls of adamant could not more effectually separate us from direct spiritual communion than the state in which God has created us. There is something impressively solemn in this deep seclusion, this everlasting loneliness. No other soul knows us; no other finite spiritual eye has ever seen us. The most unthinking must have some experience of this. There are times when we are lonesome, insupportably lonesome, and then is it fear, or joy, or are they both combined in the thought that there is, indeed, One who does thus know us? It may startle us when we think of all that is to be seen, and more, perhaps, than our own inner sense has ever seen, in that deep dwelling of our spirituality; truly is there pain, but this is not the only feeling; there may be consolation in the thought, yea, even strength and joy. There is one soul that knows us, personally, intimately, thoroughly—knows us not by media, by signals outward or interior, not by induction from effects, or by foreknowledge from causes, but by direct and immediate presence, by more than presence, even by spirit-pervading, interpenetrating spirit—not only an occasional or partial beholding, but an unintermitted knowledge of our all, our sense, our memory, our intelligence, our consciousness, even when least sensible, least known, least conscious to ourselves. T. Lewis.
Our Christian friends watch us, our unchristian enemies watch us, angels in heaven watch us, and the devils that roam the earth watch us, but none watch us like God. We do not see Him as He stands by our side; the great observer of us is invisible and His scrutiny a silent one; we think not of Him, but He marks every one of us every hour with the most searching attention. He listens to our words, acquaints Himself with our doings, follows us wherever we go. We cannot for one moment get away from His eye. And all this while He is not taking a merely superficial glance at us; He is searching our inmost hearts, looking us through and through. C. Bradley.
5. Thou hast beset me behind and before. What would you say if, wherever you turned, whatever you were doing, whatever thinking, whether in public or private, with a confidential friend telling your secrets, or alone planning them—if, I say, you saw an eye constantly fixed on you, from whose watching, though you strove ever so much, you could never escape, that could perceive your every thought? The supposition is awful enough. There is such an Eye. De Vere.
That we should be so little checked, so little awed, in the course of our daily lives, by this perpetual and awful presence; that we should know God to be looking at every motion and every impulse, and should be so unmoved; that we should do so many things before God’s face which the opening of a door and the entrance of a fellow-creature would instantly stop—this is an instance of that weakness of faith which proves the fall of man. There is no need to exaggerate in this matter. We may recognize to the full that it is a part of God’s own ordinance that we should be, as it were, unconscious of His presence during the greater part of every day of our lives. But that which is quite peculiar in this case is the nature of the forgetfulness. In the presence of father or of mother, or of any one else for whom you care, though you forget, yet the slightest real temptation, still more the slightest open sin, is sure to put you instantly in remembrance. Now I fear there is no such perpetual readiness in us to remember the presence of God. We forget His presence in the absorption of our daily employments and amusements; and forgetting it, we approach some sin which we know that He has forbidden. But our approach to the forbidden path rarely puts us in mind of the awful eye that is ever silently marking our steps. This is a veil which the devil puts before our eyes. It is the blindness of our fallen state. The right state of mind plainly is to have the thought of God’s presence so perpetually at hand that it shall always start before us whenever it is wanted. This perpetual, though not always conscious sense of God’s presence would, no doubt, if we would let it have its perfect work, gradually act on our characters just as the presence of our fellow-men does. This habit, beyond all others, strengthens our faith. Bishop Temple.
We ought to live and learn to live all day long with the thought that God’s eye is upon us, if for no other reason, for this one alone—that this is the truth, that this is the real condition under which we must live. The thought of God’s eye upon us is usually looked upon as a thought to restrain and bridle us in the hour of temptation and carelessness; and so it is. But with our selfish love of forbidden things we miss what is meant not merely to restrain us, but to be the greatest and most unfailing of our comforts. The thought that God sees us always is His great encouragement and help to His children in doing right. His eye is not the eye of a Judge and Ruler only, but of a Shepherd and Father, the Lover of the souls of men, these poor souls of ours and of our brethren, not sparing even His own Son for them. We are being watched by an eye of tenderness and sympathy deeper and truer than even that of any man on earth for his suffering friend. Church.
7-10. Passing now from God’s all-perfect knowledge to His universal presence, he would fain represent this by supposing all imaginable ways of escape from it. “If I were to mount up to heaven, Thou art there; or make Sheol my bed, thou art there.” If I say, “I will take the wings of dawn; let me dwell in the farthest sea; even there Thy hand would lead me; Thy right hand would hold me fast.” C.—“Suppose I should think of getting out of Thy sight, that I might shake off the awe of Thee; suppose I should think of revolting from my obedience to Thee, or of disowning a dependence on Thee, and of shifting for myself; alas! whither can I go?” A heathen could say, Whithersoever thou turnest thyself, thou wilt see God meeting thee. (Seneca.) H.
7. Inasmuch as the spirit in man is the seat of understanding, the Psalmist transfers the same to God; which is clearer from the second member, where the word face (presence) is put for knowledge or sight. The Psalmist is employed with the practical truth that by no change of place or circumstance can man escape from the eye of God. There is further implied, too, in the thought of escape, and in the thought of darkness, a sense of sin and the terror of an awakened conscience, which of itself would lead a man to hide himself, if it were possible, from his Maker. Calvin.
Even the sacred Scriptures instruct us to seek the omnipresent Deity first within the sanctuary of our own bosom. Is it not the consciousness of the inward presence of Jehovah, which led the Psalmist to say, Whither shall I flee from Thy Spirit? It was the Spirit, the face of Jehovah, which accompanied the Psalmist in all places; he was conscious of this Spirit abiding within him, whether he should ascend toward heaven or make his bed in hell; this Spirit who reproveth men for sin, this Divine countenance which looketh upon men with flaming eyes, went with the Psalmist wherever he went. Tholuck.
Thy presence. The presence of God’s glory is in heaven; the presence of His power on earth; the presence of His justice in hell; and the presence of His grace with His people. If He deny us His powerful presence, we fall into nothing; if He deny us His gracious presence, we fall into sin; if He deny us His merciful presence, we fall into hell. John Mason.—
We never shall escape from omnipresence. There is no fleeing from a being who is everywhere and who is omnipotent. The old Latin proverb says, “If you wish to flee from God, flee to God.” For the only way to flee from an omnipotent being, and an omnipotent one, is to flee to Him. J. Cook.
In all lands and coasts it is His sun that shines, His elements of earth or water that bear us, His air we breathe; but it is our special privilege that His gracious presence is ever with us; that no sea is so broad as to divide us from His favor; that wheresoever we feed, He is our host; wheresoever we rest, the wings of His blessed providence are stretched over us. Let my soul be sure of this. T. Adams.—What the atmosphere is to the physical life, that a sense of the Divine omnipresence is to secret prayer. Ambition, self-interest, the love of enterprise, as motives, in some of the greatest crises of life, ebb from under the soul and leave it stranded; a sense of the Divine omnipresence is the only motive that wears, and that is capable of flooding the highest harbor bar of temptation, and carrying the soul fully out to sea. J. Cook.
8. Thou art there. Or, more emphatically and impressively in the original, “Thou!” That is, the Psalmist imagines himself in the highest heaven, or in the deepest abodes of the dead—and lo! God is there also; He has not gone from him! he is still in the presence of the same God! Barnes.
The effort to see God about us is of the highest practical moment. There is no one perhaps who has not known the value of the thought, Thou, God, seest me; but this seeing God is something more. That is a safeguard, but this is strength; that keeps us from doing, but this arms us to do; that suggests the presence of a Judge, but this the presence of a Redeemer. And in the common details of life it is this, the conviction of the nearness of God to help us, which we want above all things. We pray languidly, expecting little; we take the gifts and the trials which come to us for the most part as a matter of course; we are like the nine lepers who made their petition and received their answer, without actually knowing that the petition was addressed to a present God, and that the answer came directly from Him. But when the better way is opened let us boldly enter upon it, and claim, like the Samaritan, to see the personal love of God in the action of His providence. Bishop Westcott.
Sheol—“asking, demanding, insatiable”—is used of the realm of death, i.e., the place of departed spirits, to which all go alike, whether good or bad. The word “Sheol” occurs sixty-five times in the Hebrew Scriptures; and in sixty-one of these it is translated Hades in the Septuagint Greek version, and four times by thanatos, i.e., death. It is sometimes (but only poetically) used for qeber or qibrah—“a grave.” Hades is the “unseen,” invisible world of spirits, to which all alike go, whether good or bad. It is thus (practically) identical with Sheol. In the New Testament Gehenna is literally “the valley of Hinnom,” which was used by the Jews as a place to consume refuse in, or filth of any kind; hence the word was subsequently used to express, figuratively, the utmost degree of severity and opprobruum to which the wicked in Sheol or Hades are exposed. Tartarus is only referred to in 2 Pet. 2:4, and is adopted (apparently) from the heathen mythology, where it stands related to Hades, just as Gehenna, in Jewish theology, does to Sheol. In short, then, all souls, without exception, go to Sheol or Hades, while the wicked alone go to Gehenna or Tartarus. R. Young.
10. Thy hand lead me, hold me. We need not fear the omnipresence of love, nor the omniscience which knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows. Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His presence, and desire, as the height of all felicity and the power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in the light of His countenance, till the day come when we shall receive the crown of our perfecting in that we shall be “ever with the Lord.” A. M.
12. The darkness darkeneth not from Thee, for there is no darkness or shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. No hypocritical mask or disguise, how specious soever, can save any person or action from appearing in a true light before God. Secret haunts of sin are as open before God as the most open and barefaced villainies. H.
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it. Daniel Webster.
13-16. The fact that man is manifest to God even to the very root of his being and on every side is now accounted for by man’s origin. The development of the child in the womb was looked upon by the Israelitish Chokma (Wisdom) as one of the greatest mysteries (Eccl. 11:5); here the poet sets forth this coming into being as a miracle of God’s omniscient and omnipresent omnipotence. The reins are made specially prominent, in order to characterize them, the seat of the tenderest and most secret emotions, as the work of Him who trieth the heart and reins. D.
13. My reins. It seems to denote the sensational and emotional part of the human being, as afterward “the bones” denote the framework of the body. P.—The meaning of the first clause seems to be, Thou hast in Thy power and at Thy control the very seat of my strongest sensibilities, my pains and pleasures; and this subjection is coeval with my being, for even before birth I was under thy protection and command, as I am now. A.
Mine innermost being (Hebrew, my reins, kidneys), regarded in the Semitic psychology as the seat of the desires, affections, and all the deeper emotions that distinguish man’s spiritual nature. The interior parts of the body represent the points through which, in one direction, the immortal spirit was supposed to express itself outwardly, and in the opposite direction, to be wrought upon by the Spirit of God. This reference lifts the whole following description above any gross material conceptions, as if the Psalmist were glorifying the wisdom and power of God, as exhibited in his physical constitution. It is not in the possession of a skilfully wrought body, with members adapted to his life on the earth, that man is “fearfully distinguished.” The man and the beast are alike in having the heart, the reins, and all other material organs, performing their several functions with admirable perfection and fidelity. But this is the marvel of God’s workmanship and the chief glory of man, that his perishable body is the seat and throne of spiritual and Divine endowments, and that the two diverse elements in his nature are woven together as one.
There is wrapped up in the embryonic condition of man not merely a body to be developed into wondrous symmetry, strength, and adaptation to temporary purposes, but an eternity of thought, feeling, fellowship with God, and spiritual activity and enjoyment. It is a fine thought of Hupfeld, that the “imperfect substance is the yet undeveloped course of life, the days of which, in their continuity, are the thread, rolled up as in a ball, which is unwound as life goes on.” Yet it is not his own thought, but that suggested by the most literal translation of the words of the Hebrew poet. De Witt.
14. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Never was so terse and expressive a description of the physical conformation of man given by any human being. So “fearfully” are we made, that there is not an action or gesture of our bodies which does not, apparently, endanger some muscle, vein, or sinew, the rupture of which would destroy either life or health. We are so “wonderfully” made, that our organization infinitely surpasses, in skill, contrivance, design, and adaptation of means to ends, the most curious and complicated piece of mechanism not only ever executed “by art and man’s device,” but ever conceived by human imagination. R. Warner.
15. Not hid was my frame from Thee, when I was made in secret, embroidered in depths of the earth. The not hid is a meiosis, implying that God saw it clearly and fully understood it, inasmuch as He Himself created it. Frame, literally, strength, applied to the bones and sinews as the strength or framework of the body. A.
“Embroidered with great skill” is an accurate poetical description of the creation of veins, sinews, muscles, nerves, etc. What tapestry can equal the human fabric? This work is wrought as much in private as if it had been accomplished in the darkness of the abyss. The expressions are poetical, beautifully veiling, though not absolutely concealing the real meaning. S.
In every part, beauty, strength, convenience meet together. Neither is there any whereof our weakness cannot give reason why it should be no otherwise. How hast thou disposed of all the inward vessels, for all offices of life and nourishment! No vein, sinew, artery is idle. There is no piece in this exquisite frame, whereof the place, use, form, doth not admit wonder and exceed it. Bishop H.
But as yet we have spoken but of the casket wherein the jewel lieth. The soul, that Divine spark and blast, how quick, nimble, various, and indefatigable in its motions! how comprehensive in its capacities! how it animateth the body, and is like God Himself, all in every part! Who can trace the flights of reason? What a value hath God set upon the soul! He made it after His image, He redeemed it with Christ’s blood. Manton.—What is it which unites soul and body? how do they touch?
how do they keep together? how is it we do not wander to the stars or the depths of the sea, or to and fro as chance may carry us, while our body remains where it was on earth? Certainly it is as uncomprehensible as anything can be, how soul and body can make up one man; and, unless we had the instance before our eyes, we should seem in saying so to be using words without meaning. For instance, would it not be extravagant and idle to speak of time as deep or high, or of space as quick or slow? Not less idle, surely, it perhaps seems to some races of spirits to say that thought and mind have a body, which in the case of man they have, according to God’s marvellous will. Newman.
I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made—made immortal and spiritual like Thee, made to sustain conscious and most endearing relations to Thee, made wise by Thine unsearchable wisdom, made happy in Thine immediate presence, destined to an everlasting progress toward that great luminary, the faint irradiations of whose love now, in this distant world, are my song in my pilgrimage. B. B. E.
16. My unformed substance did Thine eyes see, and in Thy book all of them are written, days are formed, and there is not one among them. This is one of the most obscure and doubtful verses in the Book of Psalms. Its difficulty to our own translators may be gathered from the fact that substance yet being imperfect answers to a single Hebrew word, and that my members is a gratuitous addition to the text. The first word in Hebrew occurs only here, but is clearly derived from a verb which means to roll or roll up (2 Kings 2:8), and may therefore be supposed itself to signify something rolled up or rolled together, and from this may be deduced the sense of something shapeless or unformed, or more specifically that of an embryo. The next difficulty lies in the expression all of them, evaded in the English Bible by changing it to all my members and then making this the subject of the plurals following. The best interpreters are now disposed to construe all of them with days. In Thy book all of them are written—namely, all my days, as they were planned, projected, or decreed, before as yet one of them had really existed. Written and formed are then parallel expressions. All of them are written, days are delineated or depicted. By days (translated in our Bible in continuance) we are then to understand not merely the length but the events and vicissitudes of life. This is one of those cases in which the difficulty lies in the particular expressions while the general import of the passage is clearly determined by the context. A.
Man, in the very rudiments of existence, is a miracle of design. The threads of a strange embroidery are shot through the wondrous woof where life sleeps folded in its ante-natal cell. The Divine Artificer sees that which is rolled up in the embryo. And while He sees it, the days fitted for its development are outlined before His gaze, as the sculptor knows what shape will come from the unhewn block, as the architect has the outline of his work before him. God’s mind is God’s book. There is a secret laboratory, where birth as a natural fact, and creation as a supernatural fact, coincide. The point of reconciliation we cannot find. We see but broken segments of the perfect arch. The womb is as mysterious as the grave. Birth shrouds its secrets with a veil as impenetrable as death. But the revelation which throws some radiance upon the sombre mystery of life’s close flings back, in this Psalm, one ray at least upon the portal of its beginning. Bishop Alexander.
17,18. God is everywhere present, in the vastness of the upper heavens, in the remotest recesses of Sheol, everywhere, to the utmost borders of the material universe; but these affirmations of a universal truth are advanced in apposition to a truth which is more affecting, or which is of more intimate concernment to the devout spirit; this spirit, its faults, its terrors, its aspirations; and this animal frame, of which it is the tenant, is in the hand of God, and is dependent upon His bounty, and is cared for in whatever relates to its precarious welfare; and thus is so great a theme, the Divine omniscience, brought home to its due culmination in an outburst of religious feeling. 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. Whence came an idea of God so living, so real, so universal in its applications, so commanding in its power? Is not the book that contains it—a book into whose whole texture is woven this supernatural idea of God—is not this book a revelation of God to the soul of man? I. T.
17. He breaks off in wonder and admiration and holy thankfulness, as before in v. 14; these expressions of personal feeling lending not only much beauty and force, but also much reality to the contemplation of God’s attributes. P. —How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me,
O God! How cold and poor are our warmest thoughts toward God! How unspeakably loving and gloriously rich are His thoughts toward us! Compare Eph. 1: 18, “The riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” Fausset.—God, who knew him, thought of him, and His thoughts toward him were thoughts of love; thoughts of good, and not of evil (Jer. 24: 11). God’s omniscience, which might justly have watched over us to do us hurt, has been employed for us, and has watched over us to do us good. H.
When I awake; literally, “I have waked,” i.e., as often as he awakes from sleep he finds that he is again in the presence of God, again occupied with thoughts of God, again meditating afresh with new wonder and admiration on His wisdom and goodness. P.—The thoughts of God were the first visitors he had in the morning. God and his heart met together as soon as he was awake, and kept company all the day after. Charnock.—It is no small advantage to the holy life to “begin the day with God.” The saints are wont to leave their hearts with Him over night, that they may find them with Him in the morning. Before earthly things break in upon us, and we receive impressions from abroad, it is good to season the heart with thoughts of God. When the world gets the start of religion in the morning, it can hardly overtake it all the day; and so the heart is habituated to vanity all the day long. But when we begin with God, we take Him along with us to all the business and comforts of the day; which, being seasoned with His love and fear, are the more sweet and savory to us. Thomas Case.
19-24. The Psalm has an immediately practical aim, which is unfolded near the close. It is not an abstract description of the Divine attributes, with a mere indirect purpose in view. If God is such a being, if His vital agency reaches over all His creation, pervades all objects, illumines the deepest and darkest recesses; if His knowledge has no limits, piercing into the mysterious processes of creation, into the smallest and most elemental germs of life; if His eye can discern the still more subtle and recondite processes of mind, comprehending the half-formed conception, the germinating desire “afar off;” if, anterior to all finite existence, His predetermining decree went forth; if in those ancient records of eternity man’s framework, with all its countless elements and organs, in all the ages of His duration, were inscribed—then for His servant, His worshipper on earth two consequences follow, most practical and momentous: First, the ceasing to have or feel any complacency with the wicked, any sympathy with their evil ways, any communion with them as such; and, secondly, the earnest desire that God would search the Psalmist’s soul, lest in its unsounded depths there might be some lurking iniquity, lest there might be, beyond the present jurisdiction of his conscience, some dark realm which the omniscient eye only could explore. For an earnest consideration of the all-pervading presence and all-comprehending knowledge of God would lead every thoughtful man to the profoundest humility and self-distrust, and to the wish that the searching light of heaven may explore all the dark corners of his soul. B. B. Edwards.
19. The prayer arises from the intense hatred of wickedness as wickedness, from the deep conviction that, if hateful to a true-hearted man, it must be still more intensely hateful to Him who searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins. The soul, in the immediate presence of God, places itself on the side of God, against all that is opposed to Him. The Psalmists are profoundly convinced that their cause is right. They are sure that God is on their side. They hate evil with all their hearts, because they love God with all their hearts. But the question forces itself upon us, Are we justified ourselves in using these words? Is it right to pray, “Oh, that Thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God”? Are these words in harmony with the Christian conscience? Though there may be single expressions in the Psalter, imprecations and burning words, which are not suitable in Christian mouths, depend upon it that the whole strain of the Psalter, as sternly set against evil, is not opposed to the Christian conscience. The New Testament is not so entirely opposed to the spirit and teaching of the Old on this point as is sometimes asserted. The chief difference lies here, that in the New Testament we are taught to carry the endurance of wrong much further than was possible or conceivable before Jesus our Master set us an example that we should follow in His steps, and that we are taught by Him and His apostles what we are not taught distinctly by Psalmists and prophets: to distinguish between the sinner and the sin, between the wickedness which a man does and the man himself; that we are to try and root out wickedness without rooting out the wicked from the earth; that, with the patience of God, we are to bear with the evil and seek to reform the evil, even while we long to see it come to an end. We may not cherish a personal hatred; we may not seek for a perpersonal vengeance. But it is our bounden duty to hate wickedness and wicked characters with all our hearts. P.
20. Take Thy name in vain. If justice be wanting in our actions, or truth in our assertions and promises, they are vain; and to use God’s name in either is to take His name in vain. So that if either we take the name of God to no end, but make it common, and take it up as a custom till it come to a habit, not for any good end; or if our hearts be not stable or fixed, but light and inconstant when we take it; or if we take it to color or bolster up any falsehood or any unjust act, we take it in vain. Lancelot Andrews.
21. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee?** The simple future in the first clause comprehends several distinct shades of meaning. Do I not, may I not, must I not, hate those hating Thee? Hate them, not as man hates, but as God hates. A.—A good man hates, as God Himself doth; he hates not the persons of men, but their sins; not what God made them, but what they have made themselves. We are neither to hate the men on account of the vices they practise, nor to love the vices for the sake of the men who practise them. He who observeth invariably this distinction fulfilleth the perfect law of charity, and hath the love of God and of his neighbor abiding in him. Bishop Horne.
22. Is not my heart with Thee, O God, in all its sympathies? I hate Thy haters. As they are Thine enemies, so I count them mine. It does not seem to have entered for one moment into the Psalmist’s theology that this spirit involves sinful vindictiveness. No doubt it seemed to him the most natural thing possible and the most righteous that his sympathies should flow in the same moral channel with God’s; that his heart should be perfectly at one with the heart and the interests of his benevolent Father. C.
Loving and seeking what is good means hating what is bad. There cannot be a genuine pursuit of purity and holiness combined with tolerance of evil, or a sneaking relish for it. The attempt to follow the right without absolutely breaking with the wrong is what leads to so many disastrous failures on the part of half-way Christians. There can be no real success or progress in the service and knowledge of God unless there is an attachment to it, a longing for it, so deep and strong that it involves what the Psalmist stoutly calls “perfect hatred” of them that hate God; which means not only all persons, but all influences, associations, practices, indulgences and habits that are against God’s will, and interrupt the soul’s fellowship with Him. New York Examiner.
Determine to hate that which rises up in you against God—that first, that chiefly—and you will hate, along with your indifference, cowardice, meanness, all your conceit of your own poor judgment, your dislike of opposition to it, your unwillingness to have your thoughts probed to the quick. And so with this hatred, deeply and inwardly cherished, will come the true and not the imaginary charity, the genuine, not the bastard toleration. Maurice.
23. Search me, God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts. The last expression is emphatic, meaning even my most anxious and disturbed thoughts, into which corruption might most easily find entrance. In this verse he again appeals to the Divine omniscience for the purity of his intentions, and thus comes back to the point from which he started. A.
23,24. One closing supplication: Since Thou, O God, knowest me so perfectly, I implore Thee to keep Thine eye evermore upon me; reveal n.y heart truly to myself; see if there be any way of mischief, way of wrong, in me; and lead me in the way of life eternal. C.
Two kinds of hypocrisy—namely, that of deceiving the world and that of imposing on ourselves—are touched with wonderful beauty in the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm. The folly of the first kind of hypocrisy is set forth by reflections on God’s omniscience and omnipresence. The other kind of hypocrisy, whereby a man deceives himself, is intimated in the two last verses, where the Psalmist addresses himself to the great Searcher of hearts in that emphatical petition, “Try me, O God, and seek the ground of my heart; prove me, and examine my thoughts. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Addison.
Let our outer life of word and look and deed be ever so fair before men, it is our inner life, the life of the spirit, the life of motive, thought and principle, that God searches and tries. It is comparatively easy to gain the reputation of goodness among men. But God looks not only at what we do, but how and why we do it. True religion is a religion of the heart, a religion of motives; and it must be a religion of the heart because this can be the only education for heaven. Tudor.
The real prayer of faith says, “Search me, O God, and try my heart—try me and know my thought, and see if there be any wicked way within me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” That prayer, fervently offered, never fails. It cuts off all unlawful requests and motives. It asks God to root out all self-will, to tame inordinate desire, to bring the human will into harmony with His own, and then to bestow what He sees good. Such a prayer stands on the broad foundation, “Thy will be done.” Armitage.
“That man must have a rare confidence,” says Calvin, “who offers himself so boldly to the scrutiny of God’s righteous judgment.” And then he remarks that such a prayer is no evidence of self-ignorance or a presumptuous spirit, but of integrity of heart and the absence of all hypocrisy. It is connected with what precedes in this way—that, having declared his utter separation from and aversion to the wicked, he prays that this may be no mere outward separation; he remembers that, even while he seems most opposed to the wicked, the all-seeing eye may discern in him some way of evil and sorrow; that only as God holds his hand and leads him can he walk in the way of life. P.
These words express an appeal to the omniscience of God in proof of the sincerity of the Psalmist’s love to Him. There is a frank affection and candor about the words to which the heart of our own personal experience readily corresponds. They breathe the quiet repose of one speaking in confidence to another whom he trusts, and whom he is authorized to trust. The words express a single-hearted and undivided desire that nothing whatever may interpose between the soul and God, or interrupt the enjoyment of His presence. This second feeling is a necessary part of the first. Whatever there was in his heart, or in his thoughts, or in his manner and his conduct displeasing to God, and which prevented his walking in the way of everlasting life, that the Psalmist was prepared to give up, holding nothing back. His prayer implies a desire for holiness at any cost of discipline and chastisement, a wish to learn the lesson even though it should be beneath the rod, to get nearer to God even though the path should tear him away from all he loved below. E. Garbett.
This is the end of simple-hearted, sincere souls, in their appeals at a throne of grace, that, “with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” they may be “changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Thus the new creature appeals to the God of all grace to be searched, tried, and led. W. Mason.
The thoughts of this Psalm are presented in a gradually ascending series. The illustrations rise in a beautiful progression. God’s ubiquity and unlimited knowledge are first illustrated by outward and, as it were, tangible allusions; then by the wonderful processes of creation, which no eye can pierce; then by those eternal decrees which accurately delineated all the organic structures that were to come into being; and finally, by the climax and crowning wonder of all, God’s goodness to His frail and humble servants on earth, His thoughts of love inestimably precious, more in number than the sands on the sea-shore. Is it a matter of surprise that our path and our lying-down are environed by this great Being; that in our walks we never can be solitary or alone; that, free and independent as we may feel, we are evermore pressed upon by a personal and conscious existence; that in the highest heavens He is no more present than He is in the profoundest abyss; that it is His power which wings the earliest beam of the morning, and His wisdom which guides it on its adventurous course; that in the night with its rayless gloom He walks as in the blaze of day? Do not be astonished at this; there are greater mysteries, “for Thou hast created my reins.” My bodily frame, fearfully and wonderfully made; that incipient organization, so faint, so minute, as to mock all investigation; that contexture so complicated; those threads so innumerable and so cunningly interwoven, animated by that impalpable breath, that subtle essence, which we call life—this is the most wonderful of all. Before this curious mechanism of thine, the splendor of the morning and the solemn pomp of night fade away. Wrapped up within thee are mysteries higher than thou couldst find in heaven, deeper than thou couldst discover in hell. Travel not, even in thy wish, to the ends of the earth to see God’s wisdom; it is nigh thee, in thine own frame, in thy breathing life. Thou carriest about with thee treasures of knowledge which science can never explore. Thou art in thyself a proof of Divine skill, which the heaven and the earth cannot equal. Yet be not astonished at this. All these wondrous existences, with their ten thousand elements, organs, and ramifications, did not come by chance. They were arranged from all eternity. The model, the plan, all the minute specifications, if we may so say, were present with the Architect, were perfectly known long before time began. In His book thy members were written in the unfathomable depths of a past eternity. This predetermining resolve, this delineating decree, was more astonishing than the power that executed it; the design more extraordinary than its accomplishment. God’s consummate knowledge is shown, if possible, in greater perfection by the original conception than by the finishing act.
But more touching than all this stupendous knowledge, more impressive than all this unerring prescience, is the Divine compassion; God’s thoughts toward them that fear Him, overflowing with love, uncounted in number. The greatest wonder in God is His condescension. His philanthropy, His fatherly benignity, His yearning tenderness, is the crowning grace, is the thought which comprehends and exhausts all others. Therefore inestimably dear are God’s thoughts toward him! In all the stages of his being, in all his varied experience from the dawn of life, in helpless infancy onward, the Divine goodness has pursued him with unfaltering step; that goodness has lavished upon him its boundless stores; the Divine perfections have been, as it were, conspiring to mark him out as the object of unceasing and exuberant favor. B. B. E.
God’s omniscience searching our inmost thoughts, knowing our hidden motives, scanning our most secret ways, should keep us in awe of sin. God’s omnipresence, surrounding us continually, making it impossible for us, by darkness or by distance, to hide from His eye or escape from His hand, should at once dissuade us from evil, and encourage us to commit ourselves to His guidance, and trust in His love. That love surrounds us every moment with its precious thoughts—thoughts originating life, shaping its wondrous organism, providing for our sustentation, our culture, our enjoyment, filling the world with forms of beauty and resources of happiness; thoughts as inexhaustible as the desert of its sands, the sky of its stars, each separate grain a golden thought of love, each point of light a world, a constellation of glory. J. P. T.
God is in our life to be seen. He who can be seen nowhere with the bodily sight—whom we might follow and seek in vain through all the realms of space, whom we should never find on brightest mountain-tops, if they were transfigured with the light of Tabor, nor in solemn grove, nor in deepest forest shade, nor among the flowers of Eden, if Eden were restored; no! nor could we see Him in heaven itself if we were there; He can be seen and felt by the soul, by the spiritual perception, by that wonderful faculty called “faith,” which is just our soul seeing God. By that faculty we can see
Him in all our earthly ways, at our right hand, at our left, behind, before, around, above, about our bed, about our path, in the field of labor, in the place of rest, in the flow of prosperity, in the ebb of adversity, in the sunshine of joy, in the darkness of sorrow, in the hardness of duty, in the sweetness of recompense, in the battle of life, in the conquering moment of death—God everywhere! God always! God forevermore! A. Raleigh.
Standing face to face with the unseen, there is, first of all, a keen and overpowering sense of the Divine personality. The starry spaces are awful, not as being boundless and empty, but as being swept forever by the vision and the breath of God. The only shadow anywhere is of sin. Self-impeachment begins just where and when self-consciousness begins. Till God has pardoned there is no peace. But when He pardons, we see new, great depths in Him, which His angels have never seen, and our little life lays holds on His for time and for eternity. Out of such experience come all the great Psalms, and hymns, and prayers, and meditations, and high discourse of all the Christian generations. R. D. Hitchcock.
One of the most obvious and direct inferences suggested by this Psalm is this, that meditation upon God’s character, the intellectual contemplation of His attributes, should lead us to self-review and humiliation. This practical effect should not be confined merely to what are termed His moral attributes. We may indeed consider abstractly, and for scientific purposes, certain aspects of His nature, certain modes of His being, and denominate them natural or intellectual attributes. But in reality His being is one and indivisible. His nature is not separable into parts. All those states which we, on account of the imperfection of language, term qualities or characteristics, really coexist and cohere; they are very inadequate symbols to express a nature which is at once personal and boundless, a perfection whose moral and intellectual excellences can no more be separated than the exact edge or transition points in the colors of the rainbow. Such is the uniform representation of the Scriptures. They never teach us to gaze upon these attributes as intellectual propositions. The omniscience of God is a holy omniscience. The omnipresence of God is the presence of spotless holiness and infinite love. The power of God is the agent and executor of perfect righteousness. When, therefore, we look at any of the symbols of Divine agency around us, the practical effect should be lowly adoration and the deepest selfabasement. The moon, walking in her brightness, is the teacher of moral purity. The stars in their courses, with sounds inaudible to our gross sense, whisper of the moral serenity of that Being who appointed them their circuits. The gorgeous apparitions in the western evening sky prefigure a realm whose pure light never fades away. All nature, all visible forms, all this wondrous mechanism of sky and earth, all the depths of our physical and immortal nature, speak not simply of abstract power and vast knowledge, nor simply of God’s overflowing love, but by the law of contrast, by one of the most active principles of our nature, they lead us to feel our own impurity, our own helplessness, the fearful uncongeniality of our nature to that of Him with whom we have to do. What are we, that we should be placed in the midst of such glories? Why should defilement mar Divine purity? Why should beings so corrupt, with hearts so inclined to evil, with eyes blind to the moral beauty that is lavished all around, be permitted to deface what they cannot love and appreciate? “Search me and try my heart; by Thy cleansing power qualify me to live in a world radiant with the Divine perfections, to be an accepted worshipper in this pure temple, and to meditate, thoughtfully, on Thy uncreated glories!” this should be the spontaneous exclamation of every one who is permitted to turn aside and see this great sight. B. B. E.
Let no soul examine itself by any lower marks than this, participation of the Divine nature, conformity to the Divine image. Examine what alliance your soul has to God; “whose is the image and superscription;” for conformity to the image and will of God, that is religion; and that God will own for His, when all the counterfeits and shadows of it will disappear forever. Some are searching God’s decretals to find their names written in the Book of Life, when they should be studying to find God’s name written upon their hearts, “Holiness to the Lord” engraven upon their souls. Some are busy examining themselves by notes and marks without them, when they should labor to find the marks and prints of God and His nature upon them. Some have their religion in their books and authors, which should be the law of God written in the tables of the heart. Some glory in the bulk of their duties, and in the multitude of their religious performances and achievements, whereas it were much more excellent if they could see their likeness to the Lord, and the characters of Divine beauty and holiness drawn upon their hearts and lives. Shaw.
There are anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and vigor of faith and hope and charity by immuring themselves, night and day, in the infected atmosphere of their own bosoms. Let a man of warm heart, who is happily surrounded with the dear objects of the social affections, try the effect of a parallel practice; let him institute anxious scrutinies of his feelings toward those whom, hitherto, he has believed himself to regard with unfeigned love; let him use in these inquiries all the fine distinctions of a casuist, and all the profound analyses of a metaphysician, and spend hours daily in pulling asunder every complex emotion of tenderness that has given grace to the domestic life; and, moreover, let him journalize these examinations, and note particularly, and with the scrupulosity of an accomptant, how much of the mass of his kindly sentiments he has ascertained to consist of genuine love, and how much was selfishness in disguise; and let him, from time to time, solemnly resolve to be, in future, more disinterested and less hypocritical in his affection toward his family. What, at the end of a year, would be the result of such a process? What but a wretched debility and dejection of the heart, and a strangeness and a sadness of the manners, and a suspension of the native expressions and ready offices of zealous affection? Meanwhile, the hesitations and the musings, and the upbraidings of an introverted sensibility absorb the thoughts. Is it, then, reasonable to presume that similar practices in religion can have a tendency to promote the healthful vigor of piety?
By the constitution of the human mind its emotions are strengthened in no other way than by exercise and utterance; nor does it appear that the religious emotions are exempted from this general law. The Divine Being is revealed to us in the Scriptures as the proper and supreme object of reverence, of love, and of affectionate obedience; and the natural means of exercising and of expressing these feelings are placed before us, both in the offices of devotion and in the duties of life; just in the same way that the opportunities of enhancing the domestic affections are afforded in the constitution of social life. Why, then, should the Christian turn aside from the course of nature, and divert his feelings from their outgoings toward the supreme object of devotional sentiments, by instituting curious researches into the quality and quantity and composition of all his religious ious sensations? This spiritual hypochondriasis enfeebles at once the animal, the intellectual, and the moral life, and is usually found in conjunction with infirmity of judgment, infelicity of temper, and inconsistency of conduct. I. T.
It will generally be much better to just let God put us on such ways of discovery here as will be best for us. But this is not what most disciples go to self-examination, or by their teachers are put on self examination for; they are set to it, not to find out their faults and correct them, but to settle and try out their Christian evidences. Evidences of piety are a great deal more likely to be hidden or ruled out in that way than they are to be found, and the most sensitively delicate disciple is the one that will suffer. On the other hand, when evidences are sought in this manner, that class of persons who are commonly finding what they look for, will be almost certain to fish up the evidences they want. This whole method of self-examination, to settle the question of Christian evidence, is deceptive, unscriptural, and bitterly injurious. It is injurious not only in misleading, but in hindering the disciple. A man does not want to examine himself to find whether he is cold or hungry, whether he loves his child, whether he is an honest man? No, the sturdy fact is that all such answers sought come and ought to come without seeking, and can only come of themselves in simply being true. The real wisdom of the Christian is that he shall not face round as he walks to examine the tracks he makes, but ask the way to Zion with his face thitherward. The thing wanted here, and that which only yields the true evidence, is the genuine downrightness of our life—that it covers no shams, gets up no mock virtues and no pretexts of proceeding scientifically, but goes right on, putting its face the way it goes, and not backward. It is consciously right, and God is consciously yielding it His immediate testimony. And let there be no doubt of this, as if it were a way not safe. God will make it safe as He only can. And if you are afraid that some looseness may creep in, or some false hope steal you away, be upon your watch, for watching is one thing and self-examination a very different thing. Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation, and let the prayer be this, which God will never disregard, “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.” Then forward, forward in that way. Bushnell.