Psalms 139: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The psalm speaks to God about how completely God knows the writer: every movement, every thought, every word before it is spoken. It then says there is nowhere the writer could go to get away from God, not the heights, the depths, the far sea, or the dark, and traces God's knowledge back to the writer's forming before birth. The last verses turn to the violent people who misuse God's name, declare the writer's hatred of them, and end by asking God to search him and lead him.

Claim by Claim

1. 139:1
   • The speaker addresses the LORD.
   • The LORD has searched the speaker.
   • The LORD knows the speaker.
2. 139:2
   • God knows when the speaker sits down.
   • God knows when the speaker rises up.
   • God understands the speaker's thought from far off.
3. 139:3
   • God measures out the speaker's path and his lying down.
   • God is familiar with all the speaker's ways.
4. 139:4
   • There is no word on the speaker's tongue that the LORD does not know completely.
   • The Hebrew is open to meaning either that God knows every word already spoken or that God knows the word before it is on the tongue.
5. 139:5
   • God has enclosed the speaker behind and in front.
   • God has laid his hand upon the speaker.
6. 139:6
   • Such knowledge is too wonderful for the speaker.
   • Such knowledge is set too high.
   • The speaker cannot attain to it.
7. 139:7
   • The speaker asks where he could go away from God's spirit.
   • The speaker asks where he could flee from God's presence.
8. 139:8
   • If the speaker ascends to heaven, God is there.
   • If the speaker makes his bed in Sheol, God is there.
9. 139:9
   • The speaker considers taking the wings of the dawn.
   • The speaker considers dwelling in the farthest part of the sea.
10. 139:10
    • Even there God's hand would lead the speaker.
    • Even there God's right hand would hold the speaker.
11. 139:11
    • The speaker considers saying that the darkness will cover him.
    • In that saying, the night around him is light.
    • The Hebrew is open to meaning either that the night around him becomes light or that the light around him becomes night.
12. 139:12
    • Darkness is not dark to God and does not hide anything from him.
    • The night shines like the day.
    • Darkness and light are the same to God.
13. 139:13
    • God formed the speaker's inmost parts.
    • God wove the speaker together in his mother's womb.
14. 139:14
    • The speaker will praise God.
    • The speaker is made in a fearful and wonderful way.
    • God's works are marvelous.
    • The speaker's soul knows this very well.
15. 139:15
    • The speaker's frame was not hidden from God.
    • The speaker was made in secret.
    • The speaker was embroidered together in the lowest parts of the earth.
16. 139:16
    • God's eyes saw the speaker's substance while it was still unformed.
    • All of them were written in God's book.
    • The days were fashioned.
    • There was not yet one of them.
    • The Hebrew leaves it open whether what was written in the book is the speaker's members or the speaker's days.
17. 139:17
    • God's thoughts are precious to the speaker.
    • The sum of God's thoughts is vast.
    • The speaker addresses God.
18. 139:18
    • If the speaker counted God's thoughts, they would be more than the sand.
    • When the speaker awakes, he is still with God.
19. 139:19
    • God will slay the wicked.
    • The Hebrew form is a wish or condition, 'if only God would slay the wicked'.
    • The speaker tells men of blood to depart from him.
20. 139:20
    • They speak against God wickedly.
    • God's enemies take God's name in vain.
21. 139:21
    • The speaker asks whether he does not hate those who hate the LORD.
    • The speaker asks whether he is not grieved with those who rise up against God.
22. 139:22
    • The speaker hates them with complete hatred.
    • The speaker counts them as his enemies.
23. 139:23
    • The speaker asks God to search him.
    • The speaker asks God to know his heart.
    • The speaker asks God to test him.
    • The speaker asks God to know his anxious thoughts.
24. 139:24
    • The speaker asks God to see whether there is any hurtful or offensive way in him.
    • The speaker asks God to lead him in the everlasting way.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

139:1

"LORD" in small capitals marks the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers said "Lord" aloud in its place, and English translations have followed that custom ever since. "Searched" translates a verb used of digging into the ground or exploring a country, investigating something thoroughly, not glancing at it.

139:2

"Sitting down and getting up" is a Hebrew way of naming two opposite ends of something to mean the whole of it, here, everything a person does from waking to resting. Compare "coming and going."

139:5

The verb behind "close me in" (KJV "beset") is used elsewhere of laying siege to a city or hemming someone in on all sides. The Hebrew does not settle whether this feels like protection or confinement, and readers have taken it both ways.

139:7

"Spirit" translates Hebrew *ruach*, which also means breath and wind, the active, moving power of God rather than a separate being. "Escape from you" is literally "flee from your face"; a person's "face" in Hebrew stands for their presence and attention.

139:8

The KJV's "hell" is Hebrew *Sheol*, the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, good and bad alike. It is not a place of punishment; the sense is simply the realm of the dead, as far down as "the heavens" are up.

139:9

"The wings of the dawn" pictures daybreak sweeping west across the sky at impossible speed. "The farthest edge of the sea" means the far western limit of the Mediterranean, the end of the known world. East to west, the two phrases cover the whole earth.

139:10

The right hand was the strong hand, and in Hebrew idiom the hand of power, rescue, and favor, not simply one hand rather than the other.

139:13

KJV "reins" means the kidneys. Hebrew located the deepest, most private feelings and the conscience in the kidneys, much as English locates them in the heart. The second verb means to weave or knit, as cloth is made on a loom.

139:14

The Hebrew is compressed and has been read more than one way: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made," or "you are fearsome and wonderful" in what you do. Either way "fearfully" means awe-inspiring, not frightening. "My soul" translates *nephesh*, the whole living self, not an inner part separate from the body.

139:15

KJV "curiously wrought" means skillfully embroidered, the verb is the one used for the multicoloured needlework of fine fabric. "The lowest parts of the earth" is a figure of speech for a place hidden deep out of sight; it stands here for the womb, though the wording also echoes the earth from which the first human was formed, and the psalm leaves both senses open.

139:16

The word behind "unformed" (KJV "my substance, yet being unperfect") appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible; it seems to mean something still shapeless and incomplete, an embryo. The rest of the verse is genuinely unclear in Hebrew: the writing in the book may be of the body's parts, as the KJV takes it, or of the days of a life, as many modern translations take it. A "book" here means a scroll kept as a record, like a register.

139:17

Precious means worth a great deal, like treasure.

139:18

"When I wake up" may mean simply waking from sleep, or may be a wordplay: the same Hebrew consonants can be read as "I come to the end": that is, of counting. The line has been read both ways since ancient times.

139:19

"Men who spill blood" translates "men of bloods"; the plural of blood in Hebrew regularly means bloodshed, so the phrase means murderers or those guilty of violent death.

139:20

This verse is one of the most damaged in the psalm and its Hebrew is uncertain at several points. "Use your name for lies" echoes the commandment against taking God's name in vain: to "lift up" a name meant to swear by it, so the charge is swearing false oaths in God's name rather than mere bad language.

139:21

"Feel disgust" renders a verb of loathing or quarreling with; the KJV's "grieved" carried that stronger sense of revulsion in 1611, not simply sadness.

139:22

"Perfect" here means complete or whole, with nothing held back, the older English sense of the word. It does not mean morally faultless.

139:23

"Test me" uses the language of assaying metal, heating it to find out what it really is. "What worries me" translates a rare word meaning disquieting or branching thoughts, the kind that trouble a person at night.

139:24

The Hebrew phrase rendered "any wrong way" can mean a way that causes pain or hurt, or a way that leads to an idol; both readings are old and neither can be ruled out. "The way that lasts forever" can equally be translated "the ancient way", the same Hebrew word covers the distant past and the endless future.