For thou hast possessed my reins; thou didst cover me in my mother's womb.
The psalm's first twelve verses press one fact home. God has searched the writer, and there is nowhere His eye does not reach. Verse 13 gives the reason for that knowledge: God formed this life at its very start. With that, the whole mood of the psalm changes.
Up to this point the sense of being watched has brought no comfort. One writer shows where relief enters:
Knowing that God sees everything and is everywhere cannot make a person at home in God's presence. Just the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. From under that eye he cannot escape, wherever he goes (1–12). What then can bring relief? The answer to this is very simple and very blessed. God's thoughts as revealed can do it. The Psalmist's thoughts about God have not done it. So up to verse 12 he is uneasy. In verse 13, however, he strikes a different note. The first thing that brings relief is remembering that God thought of him when he was in his mother's womb (13–16).
The word behind this phrase points to what is deepest and most hidden in a person. One commentator takes it literally and draws a lesson from the organ itself:
Everything about every individual is perfectly known to God, for He formed even the inward parts or kidneys, as the original really is, sometimes called "reins" because of being in driving control. The kidneys filter impurities from the blood, just as we are responsible to filter out all that is inconsistent with truth. God has made us with this ability, whether or not we use it rightly. But from the womb of one's mother, God is active in forming the individual (v. 13), and this fact awakens the praise of the psalmist's heart.
Older translations call these inward parts "the reins". God made that innermost place in a person, and that gives Him a right there no one else has:
"For You have acquired my reins" is the keynote of what follows. "The reins" stand for the very innermost parts. In the Old Testament they mean the deepest recesses of the mind. That is where the basic moral questions are weighed and settled — the good received and the evil rejected. God is the Master here — Lord of the conscience. Conscience keeps reminding us of Him and calls us before His judgment seat. He has gained this right over us by the fact the psalmist states next: that He is our Maker. "You have acquired my reins: You covered" — or, perhaps, "did interweave me in my mother's womb." Marvellous power was at work there — not aimlessly, but with purpose and plan.
The One who searches in verses 1–12 is no distant onlooker. His hands did the work:
We are the work of His hands. Here it is man as man, so that the earth out of which he was fashioned at first is like the womb out of which we were born. God has formed us, whether in the womb of dust or of our mother, the place where we were nothing before we were. The same God has always thought of us along the road. This is how confidence is gained. Gained this way, it still reaches to all God's creative knowledge and power. If He sees in the dark, He keeps in the dark.
This forming happened where no human eye could follow. Yet it was never out of God's sight:
What mysteries are wrapped up in the development of the unborn child! Every part unfinished, but not flawed — mysteries of nature, body, mind, soul and spirit; mysteries known to God alone. God knew every part before it existed, and it was written in His book. While the body was being formed, God's eye rested on it. How blessed for the Christian to realise that God was interested in him before he existed… There has never been a moment in our lives when God was not interested in us, watching over us and caring for us with an infinite and eternal love. And there never will be, for all eternity.
This has a direct bearing on how a person measures their own worth:
We do not become valuable by what we do (even if it is to marry), but are valuable because God has created us and we are precious in His eyes (see Ps. 139:12–16).
Many readers look for pictures of Christian truth in this verse. One writer allows that as application, but not as the foundation:
Christians are naturally disposed to find in all this the typical presentation of Christian truths. But however this may do as application, the literal meaning must come first, and be the foundation of all the rest. It is true that this speaks to us only of the Creator, and leaves the question of sin unbottomed. Yet a soul that has realized redemption can and will come back to God's creative thoughts, with fresh understanding of the truth that He cannot "forsake the work of His own hands."
- Maker — God did not just watch the writer's beginning. He formed the innermost part and wove the body together in the womb, with purpose and plan.
- Right — because He is Maker, He is Master of the conscience. He owns the deepest place in us, where we take in good and turn away evil.
- Reach — His eye rested on every member before it existed, so there has never been a moment of any life outside His care.
- Worth — God created us and holds us precious, and that is where our value comes from, not from what we achieve.
- Result — the eye that made the writer uneasy in verses 1–12 now becomes his reason for praise.
I will praise thee, for I am fearfully, wonderfully made. Marvellous are thy works; and [that] my soul knoweth right well.
The psalmist has just traced how fully God knows him, and found nowhere to hide — then at verse 14 his tone breaks into praise. What turns the strain of being fully known into worship, and why does he say fearfully as well as wonderfully made?
Up to this point in the psalm the searching eye of God brings no comfort at all. One writer traces the exact moment the mood changes, and locates it in the memory of God's care before birth.
What then can bring relief? The answer is very simple and very blessed. God's thoughts as revealed can do it. The psalmist's thoughts about God have not done it. So up to verse 12 he is uneasy. In verse 13 he changes his tone. The first thing that brings relief is remembering that God thought of him when he was in his mother's womb. That memory changes his whole key. "I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." He has stopped thinking about himself. He is now taken up with God.
The praise rests on a claim God has over the deepest part of a person — the "inward parts" of the previous verse. The claim is not random. It is the right of the One who made them.
The older word "reins" means the very innermost parts. In the Old Testament it stands for the deepest part of the mind. That is where a person settles the basic moral questions, takes in the good and turns down the evil. God is the Master there. He is Lord of the conscience, which keeps reminding us of Him and calls us before His judgment seat. He has this right over us for the reason the psalmist now gives: He is our Maker… Great power was at work there. It did not work aimlessly, but with purpose and plan.
The same eye that examines him now watched over him as he was formed. So the psalmist can end the psalm by inviting that examination.
The psalmist (Ps. 139:13-16) is troubled that God's eye is always on him. He has only to look back and think how that same eye watched over him before he was born, while his finely woven body was still taking shape. How could he do anything other than welcome the eye of such a One to search him through and through?
Another writer sets the same movement in order: God searches everything, the psalmist owns himself God's handiwork, and only then asks to be searched.
God searches everything. Even so, the psalmist says, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." He sees that he is God's handiwork. Only then can he ask God to search him: "Search me… try me." It is real grace looking at us.
One writer compares the wonders in the sky with the person looking at them.
Astronomers turn their telescopes to the sky to see the marvellous works of God. But the most marvellous work of all is the astronomer himself. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. But do our souls know this well?
The word is not a spare adjective. It takes in what man is morally as well as physically — a single creature capable of the highest and the lowest.
Look at man; is he not most skilfully and wonderfully put together? See in the same person the loftiest flights of thought, and the most degrading passions! Physically and morally, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
One writer keeps to the plain subject: these verses describe the forming of the natural body. He allows a picture-meaning beyond that, but only as a second sense:
Read these verses together, and leave out the words that older Bibles print in italics as added words. Then you will see that the subject is the creation of the natural body. With what we know now, we can see that it may also carry a figurative meaning.
Another writer shows what makes being fully seen by God end in praise rather than dread: Christ.
Suppose we could not link Christ with this psalm. Suppose we could not go on from it to see ourselves as God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, with everything done under His eye. Then the thought of being shown as we are in His presence would fill us with dread instead of praise.
- Searched. The psalm opens with a man uneasy under an eye he cannot escape; verse 14 is where that unease breaks.
- Made. Relief comes from one memory: the same eye watched him take shape before birth. God's thoughts about him settle him, not his thoughts about God.
- Owned. God formed his innermost parts, so He holds a Maker's right over conscience and life. And He formed with purpose and plan.
- Fearful. The word covers more than the body. One person holds the highest thoughts and the lowest desires together.
- Welcomed. He knows he is God's handiwork. So he ends by inviting the very searching he once dreaded, and turns it into praise.
My bones were not hidden from thee when I was made in secret, curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth.
God's eye, which the psalmist first tried to escape, now rests on the place where no human eye ever looked — the hidden beginning of his own body. It shows the unborn body as God's own work, known to Him before anyone else knew it existed.
Verse 15 sits at a hinge in the psalm. Until now the psalmist has been uneasy under a gaze he cannot escape. Here the same truth turns into comfort. One writer traces the change:
In the third part of the psalm there is a change. A tender thankfulness comes in. He thinks of how, in his mother's womb, this same all-knowing God had been at work, building the marvellous structure of the future man in mysterious secrecy. God's thoughts toward him now become precious to him. And now it is only happiness that the unsleeping Eye is on him, sleeping or waking.
Another writer names what did not bring relief, and what did:
Knowing that God knows everything, and that He is everywhere, cannot make a believer feel at home with Him. Just the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. He cannot escape from under that eye, wherever he goes… In verse 13, however, he strikes a different note. The first thing that brings him relief is remembering that God thought of him when he was in his mother's womb.
The older translations read "curiously wrought" where the ESV has "intricately woven." One writer gives the plainer word behind it — embroidered:
Scripture uses this verb in a striking passage in this wonderful psalm, the 139th, which traces God's thought and care of man from his beginnings in the womb: "My substance was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought" — that is, embroidered — "in the lowest parts of the earth." And indeed, nothing pictures the fine interweaving of nerves, veins and arteries so well as a marvellous embroidery. This is true of all men. Can God then be lacking in consideration and tenderness for a being on whom He has bestowed such wonderful care?
Commentators differ over the phrase the ESV renders "the depths of the earth." One writer takes it as the stuff the body is made of, not a place, and reads the "frame" as our bony structure:
He goes on to speak of these marvels: the bony framework that holds up the flesh, and the delicate embroidery of vessels and nerves branching through it. God worked all of this in secret, in "underparts of earth." Surely that does not mean the ground, which would hardly have been true of Adam. It means that human substance which is only animated dust.
Another hears an echo of Adam, formed from the ground:
Certainly one's frame was not hidden from God. His Creator had acted in secret with marvellous skill "in the lowest parts of the earth" (v. 15). This may be a reference to Adam's being formed from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7).
One writer dwells on what stood in God's book before the body existed:
What mysteries are wrapped up in the development of the unborn child! Every part unfinished, but not flawed — mysteries of nature, body, mind, soul and spirit; mysteries known to God alone. God knew every part before it existed. He had written it in His book. Before it really existed, while it was being formed, God's eye rested upon it. How blessed for the Christian to realise that God was interested in him before he had any being.
Being made by God means belonging to God. One writer adds that we study the sky and miss the greater wonder nearer home:
But He has taken our inmost being as His own. He has made us for Himself. We are His, we belong to Him… Astronomers point their telescopes at the heavens to see the marvellous works of God, while the most marvellous works of all are there in the astronomer himself. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. But do our souls know this well?
- Secret — the verse describes what no one watched: God worked on the frame in a place hidden from every human eye.
- Seen — that secret was never secret from God; His eye was on each member before any of them existed.
- Embroidered — the older word "curiously wrought" means embroidered, like the woven nerves, veins and arteries of the body.
- Debated — writers differ over "the lowest parts of the earth": one reads the dust our bodies are made of, another an echo of Adam formed from the ground.
- Praise — the eye the psalmist first fled becomes the reason he worships; being made by God means belonging to God.
Thine eyes did see my unformed substance, and in thy book all [my members] were written; [during many] days were they fashioned, when [as yet] there was none of them.
The verse closes David's account of his own beginning: before he had a body, God had a record of him. The verse says two things at once. God watched the unformed body take shape in the womb. And His book already held the days that no one had yet lived.
Up to this point the psalm has been uneasy. One commentator traces the turn:
How can a saint come to feel at home in God's presence? Knowing that God knows everything, and is everywhere, cannot do it. Rather the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. Wherever he goes, he cannot escape that eye. What then can bring relief? God's thoughts, as He has revealed them, can do it. The Psalmist's own thoughts about God have not done it… In verse 13 he strikes a different note, and the first thing that brings relief is the memory that God thought of him while he was in his mother's womb. That memory has completely changed his tone. "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well" (14). He has turned right away from thinking about himself, and is now taken up with God.
God did not watch an accident take shape. He worked with knowledge that ran ahead of the work:
And the Lord knew perfectly the substance of every individual long before this formation took place. He did not have to experiment to find what might work. Instead, everything about that person stood written in His book — figuratively speaking, of course — long before he existed. How little indeed can we understand such wisdom!
The same God who shaped the first man out of dust shapes each person out of nothing:
We are the work of His hands. Here it is man as man, so that the earth out of which he was fashioned at first is as the womb out of which we were born. God has formed us, be it in the womb of dust or of our mother, the place where we were nothing before we were.
Older translations read the middle of the verse as "in Your book all my members were written." Read that way, God's interest in a person starts before the person does. One writer carries that thought across a whole life:
God knew every part of the body before it existed. He had written it in His book. And while that part was still forming, before it truly existed, His eye rested on it. What a blessing for a Christian to realise that God took an interest in him before he existed at all! And to realise, as Paul did, that God's eye was on him from his mother's womb (Galatians 1:15). There has never been a moment in our lives — and there never will be, for all eternity — when God was not interested in us. He watches over us and cares for us with an infinite and eternal love.
The verse has sometimes been pressed into service to prove other doctrines. One commentator pushes back, while leaving room for a wider use:
People have often put forward another passage in Psalm 139 as proof that it gives us a plain revelation about the Church of God… Leave out the words printed in italics, and read these verses together. You will see that the subject is the creation of the natural body. Yet with the knowledge we now have, we can easily see that it may also have a figurative application.
Because the Searcher is also the Maker, the psalm can end with an invitation instead of an escape attempt:
If the Psalmist (Psalm 139:13-16) was troubled that God's all-seeing eye was always on him, he had only to look back. That same eye watched over him before he was born, while his finely woven body was slowly forming. How could he do anything but welcome the eye of such a One to search him through and through?
God wrote the record before we had achieved anything. One writer applies this to believers who feel passed over:
Behind this lies the old error that my value depends on what others think of me… We do not become valuable by what we do — not even by marrying. We are valuable because God has created us, and we are precious in His eyes (see Psalm 139:12-16).
- Seen — God's eye rested on the unformed body while it was still forming, before it existed.
- Written — God's book recorded everything about a person long before that person existed.
- Made — The Maker never experimented. He forms us in the womb of dust and in the womb of our mother, where we were nothing before we were.
- Welcomed — The eye that searches us is the eye that watched us form. So we can invite the search instead of running from it.
- Valued — Worth comes from being God's creation and precious in His eyes, not from what we manage to do.
But how precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
For sixteen verses the writer has felt God closing in — searched, known, followed everywhere, with nowhere to hide. Then the tone changes: the God who knows everything about him has thoughts toward him too precious to count.
Being watched by God brings no rest on its own. Relief comes from another direction.
Here we have in the psalm which follows (139) how a saint can come to be at home in the divine presence. The sense of God's omniscience as well as of His omnipresence cannot provide that. Rather the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. From under that eye he cannot escape, wherever he goes... What then can bring relief? The answer is very simple and very blessed. God's thoughts as revealed can do it. The psalmist's thoughts about God have not done it.
God knows every detail of us because He made every detail of us.
He knows all, because He has also formed all. This connects us with His taking perfect notice of us in goodness. He cares for us. He watches over every part of the body as it is formed, just as He knows our every thought. If He does, He has His own thoughts too, and these are precious to us. This is just the change and working of faith. It must begin with conscience under God's eye, because that brings us into His presence. Then it reaches God's thoughts.
The same shift is described as a reversal of feeling: what first crushed the writer ends up steadying him.
When at last he realises that God's "works" and God's "thoughts" are toward him in grace, the omniscience of God becomes the source of his deepest comfort.
If God's thoughts are precious, where do we read them?
Our souls do not just need thoughts about God. Every religion, divine or human, true or false, will teach us to think about God. What we need is God's own thoughts brought into our souls. Those thoughts are learned only in the Word, with authority and without mixture. The Scriptures are these thoughts of God conveyed to us. And the psalmist can say of them, "How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!"
God's thoughts about us stand far above our own low view of ourselves.
This is a blessed theme: the theme of God's thoughts. They are higher than our thoughts, as the heavens are higher than the earth. It is the theme of God's grace, which has no bottom and no limit. Here is real liberty. Our own thoughts are so narrow, so poor, so mean. Do we know what it is to have them beaten down by God's high, generous, liberal thoughts — His thoughts about us, about what we are in Christ?
What is God thinking about? One answer is a Person.
Every spiritual mind will readily agree that verse 17 applies to Jesus as its true subject. For it is He who from eternity filled the thoughts of God above all. The church, or any other creature, becomes the object of the Lord's thoughts only as it is in Him. Nor can those thoughts be numbered by the tongue of man. Their full expression is in Christ, and they are precious.
These thoughts did not begin when we did.
And these thoughts of God are eternal. He had them about us before the world began. Even then He purposed to have us in the same relationship His Son has to Himself, and in all the love of which His Son is the worthy object.
He tries to count them and gives up — and even that failure ends in comfort.
Those thoughts are numberless, for they are like the sand. How could they be counted? Trying to count them would put a man to sleep. But even sleep would not take him out of the presence of the Lord (v. 18).
Because His thoughts are precious, the psalm can end by inviting the very searching it once fled from.
And what is the reply of the soul to all the sifting it has consciously passed through? "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!" If that is the result, we may well say, "How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" ... Let this precious thought comfort our hearts. The Lord is sifting away much that we have valued more than Himself. But He does it only to bring out what He knows lies at the bottom of our hearts.
- Searched — The psalm opens with a man who cannot escape God's eye. That knowledge alone brings him no comfort.
- Turned — Relief comes from God's thoughts about him, not from his thoughts about God.
- Given — We do not guess at those thoughts. Commentators point to Scripture, where God gives us His mind.
- Filled — Christ is their true subject. He filled the thoughts of God from eternity, and in Him we become their object.
- Opened — Because they are precious, the man who once fled God's searching now asks for it: "Search me, O God."
[If] I would count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.
The psalmist gives up trying to count God's thoughts toward him — they outrun the grains of sand. Then sleep comes, and he wakes to find himself still with the God he could not get away from.
How can anyone be at home with a God he cannot get away from? One writer traces where the relief comes from — and it is not from the psalmist's own thoughts.
The psalm shows how a believer can come to be at home in God's presence. Knowing that God knows everything and is everywhere cannot provide that. Rather the opposite. God's eye on him is no comfort. He cannot escape from under that eye, wherever he goes. What then can bring relief? The answer to this is very simple and very blessed. God's thoughts as revealed can do it. The psalmist's thoughts about God have not done it. So up to verse 12 he is uneasy. In verse 13, however, he strikes a different note. The first thing that brings relief is the memory that God thought of him when he was in his mother's womb.
The verse before speaks of the "sum" of God's thoughts; this verse speaks of counting them one by one. A commentator holds the two together.
To him they were a revelation of God's thoughts toward him — precious thoughts of divine wisdom and love. Looked at as a whole — the final outcome of it all — the sum was great indeed. But if you took them up to look at them in detail, they were numberless as the grains of sand. And still, to the man wakened up out of the unconsciousness of his beginning, as he has been recounting it, this same God remains. Could he wish to have Him banished?
Why does waking come up at all in a verse about counting? One writer ties the two together.
Those thoughts are numberless, for they are like the sand. How could anyone count them? Trying to count them would put one to sleep; but even his sleep would not deprive him of the presence of the Lord (v. 18).
What are these countless thoughts about? One writer ties them to redemption.
The thoughts of God mentioned in verses 17 and 18 may be applied to the thoughts of His love in redemption. How precious are these thoughts, in which He has remembered the sinner's need. They are indeed more than the sand.
Another writer asks how long it would take to reach the end of them, and what to do with them now.
God is love, and all the thoughts of God spring from the great love of His heart... Eternity alone will be required to tell out all these great thoughts of love. Let us get our hearts and minds well stored with them. They were all purposed and thought out before the world's foundation.
Earlier that searching eye was no comfort. By the end he asks God to search him — the same eye, a changed heart.
He would not have it otherwise. He was oppressed before; now he is free in spirit, and he takes God's side against God's enemies... "O LORD, You have searched me and known me," are the opening words. "Search me, O God, and know my heart." ... Awake, he knows he is with God.
One writer sets David's words beside what God has done in Christ. The believer's portion, he says, is larger.
David could say, "When I awake, I am still with You" (v. 18). But we know the new creation power that worked in Christ in raising Him from among the dead... How blessed our portion, not only to be "still with" Him but to be seated there where He is in Christ Jesus.
One writer turns the verse into a daily habit.
"When I awake I am still with You" (Ps. 139:18). If you would still be with God, watch over your hearts every day; lock up your hearts with God every morning, and give Him the key.
- Searched. The psalm opens with God's eye on a man who cannot escape it, and up to verse 12 that thought leaves him uneasy.
- Relieved. The relief comes from God's revealed thoughts, not from the psalmist's own thoughts about God.
- Countless. Taken as a whole the sum is great; taken one by one the thoughts are as numberless as sand, and eternity alone will tell them out.
- Unbroken. Even sleep does not deprive him of the Lord's presence — he counts himself to sleep and wakes still with God.
- Welcomed. The man who could not escape God's eye now asks to be searched. The believer's portion runs further still: not only "still with" Him, but seated where Christ is.