Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? and whither flee from thy presence?
The psalm has just left the writer overwhelmed: God knows him completely. Verse 7 is his first reaction — two questions looking for a way out, and the psalm turns that dead end into comfort.
The urge to run comes from what the psalm has already said. A man who has failed sees that God knows everything about him:
Thinking of his own failure to live up to his responsibility, the godly man is overwhelmed in the presence of the omniscience of God. He would gladly flee from the presence of God and escape His all-searching gaze. He finds, however, that God is not only omniscient but also omnipresent. There is no escape from the Spirit of God; no place that God cannot penetrate; no solitude where God is not; no darkness that can hide from God.
Wanting to get away from God is not new. It was the very first human reaction, and it failed:
This is the puzzle for many people who want to get away from God. The first man and his wife were the first to try it. They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. It was a useless and fruitless effort. They had to come out of their miserable hiding-place and admit their terrible disobedience.
The verse pairs God's Spirit with God's presence. Writers read that pairing as a statement about who the Spirit is:
"If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there!" (Ps. 139:8). Here the psalm ascribes one of the attributes of God — His omnipresence — to the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it speaks of Him as God — "Your presence."
Forgetting this truth has a cost. David is the example:
David realised that there is no hiding place from God. His Spirit knew exactly where he was, what he was thinking, saying and doing. A most sobering thought. David's sin with Bathsheba and his other failures would never have happened had he remembered the omnipresence of the Spirit of God. Needless to say, the same applies to all believers in Christ.
There is a difference between agreeing that God sees everything and standing under that gaze:
There is no hiding from God's knowledge, no place where it is not. No wonder the psalmist should say, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it." It is not that anyone might say, "God knows everything, and of course He knows all about me." A person might have that awareness and still not know what it is to be searched by the Spirit of God. We must come to feel it ourselves. Until that happens, we will not have the full sense of what God's salvation is.
The verses that follow do more than close the exits. The place of deepest solitude turns out to be the place where God holds him:
In the first part, Spirit and presence are, I suppose, essentially the same. Heaven and Sheol — the place of the dead, not Gehenna, the place of judgment — are far apart. Omnipresence alone is the question here. In the next part, it is about relation to the Omnipresent One, and that in dependence. The wings of the dawn and the farthest parts of the sea seem to carry the thought of complete solitude. But "even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me." In the third part, exposure is what he cannot escape. Darkness and light differ only for man; for God there is no difference.
The psalm does not leave the writer running. By the end, the man who wanted out is asking God to search him:
I cannot get out of God's hand, and I cannot stand before His presence; then comes this: "Search me… try me." It is real grace looking at us.
- Searched. Verse 7 is the reaction of a man already known through and through. That knowledge is what makes him look for a door.
- Flight. Wanting distance from God is the oldest human reflex. It was first tried among the trees of the garden, and it has never worked.
- Nowhere. Heaven, Sheol, the sea, darkness — God already fills every hiding place, and His Spirit reaches as far as His presence.
- Held. The loneliest place becomes the place of dependence. You cannot escape that hand — and it is the hand that leads and holds.
- Search me. The psalm ends by asking for the very search it began by fleeing. Writers call that grace, not threat.
If I ascend up into the heavens thou art there; or if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou [art there];
In the verse before, the psalmist asks where he could go to escape God's Spirit. Here is his first answer: the highest place and the lowest are both taken. Two questions press in — what is this "Sheol" he speaks of, and is a God you cannot get away from a terror or a comfort?
The psalmist names the two furthest points he can imagine. Neither works as a hiding place. One writer marks how far apart they are, and what the pair proves:
Here, Spirit and presence are, I suppose, essentially the same. But heaven and hell — Sheol or hades, not Gehenna — are as far apart as can be. It is omnipresence, simply, that is in question.
This is not calm reflection. One writer roots the wish to flee in a man's sense of his own failure before a God who knows everything:
Thinking of his own failure in responsibility, the godly man is overwhelmed in the presence of the omniscience of God. He would gladly flee from the presence of God and escape His all-searching gaze. He finds, however, that God is not only omniscient but also omnipresent. There is no escape from the Spirit of God; no place that God cannot penetrate; no solitude where God is not; no darkness that can hide from God.
This instinct is old. One writer traces the same attempt back to the first man and woman, who hid among the trees of the garden — "a vain and fruitless effort. They had to come out of their miserable hiding-place, and own their terrible disobedience."
Older English translations put "hell" here, and that misleads readers. One writer answers another who quoted the verse as a picture of hell:
"If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there" — a very strange verse for Dr. Farrar to quote. Strange, because the word for "hell" here is sheol, as of course he knows. It is one of the words he himself describes elsewhere as "a place both for the bad and the good," and which "means an intermediate state of the soul previous to judgment." So it is not "hell" in the ordinary sense at all.
The same writer presses the phrase further. If God is present in Sheol, and can be met there, then someone must still be there to meet Him: "even in sheol there is no escape from the presence of God... Can that be nothing at all?"
Being present is not the same as watching from a distance. One writer uses the verse to settle who holds authority in the unseen world:
It is folly to think of the abode of the lost as independent of God. Whether it be "the spirits now in prison," or the bottomless pit, or the lake of fire, God, not Satan, reigns. His will at last must be obeyed. "If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there!"
Jonah later tried what this verse rules out. One writer uses the psalm to explain what his flight did not mean:
He fled from the presence of the Lord. This cannot possibly mean that he fled from the presence of Him whom he knew as the omnipresent One... He did not flee from the presence of the Lord in the sense of escaping His knowledge and authority. It means that he left the land of Israel where Jehovah dwelt; he fled from the service-commission he had received.
So where does peace come from? One writer finds it in a change of subject:
The sense of God's omniscience and of His omnipresence cannot make a saint at home in God's presence. Rather the contrary. 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.
For those who trust Him, the same reach becomes a promise rather than a threat — one writer links this psalm directly to the words of Jesus, "I am with you always."
- Searched — The wish to escape God grows out of His all-searching gaze, not out of doubt that He exists.
- Everywhere — Heaven and Sheol are the two furthest points, and God fills both. Distance is no defence.
- Sheol — The word means the state of the soul between death and judgment. It is not the "hell" of older English translations.
- Reigning — God does not just watch the depths. He rules there — God, not Satan.
- Rest — Peace comes when the writer stops studying himself and turns to God's thoughts toward him.
[If] I take the wings of the dawn [and] dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
God's knowledge of this man has covered every step, every word, every thought, until it feels like a net he wants out of. Verse 9 is his most extreme escape plan: travel at the speed of daybreak to the loneliest edge of the ocean.
The two halves of the verse combine speed and distance. Light from the rising sun crosses the sky in a moment. The far side of the sea was the emptiest place anyone in that world could name.
Suppose the swift rays of the morning sun carried him to the distant parts of the ocean, where no one lives. Even there he could not hide. God's hand would lead him, and God's strong grip would hold him.
The picture is about solitude, not just distance. What meets him there changes it:
Here it is a matter of relation to the Omnipresent, and that in dependence. The wings of the morning and the uttermost parts of the sea seem to convey complete solitude. But "even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me."
The urge to run starts with what the man sees when he looks at his own life.
The godly man thinks of his own failure in responsibility, and the God who knows everything overwhelms him. He would gladly flee from the presence of God and escape His all-searching gaze. He finds, however, that God is not only all-knowing but also everywhere present. There is no escape from the Spirit of God. No place that God cannot enter. No solitude where God is not. No darkness that can hide from God.
One man in Scripture set out on that voyage. Jonah was a prophet told to go east. He sailed west across the sea instead.
Foolish man! He had probably often read and sung the Psalm of David that asks, "Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence?… If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me." (Psalm 139:7-12) Yet "Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD."
We repeat the same failure:
Have we not, like him, tried to go west when God has told us to go east?… And have we not had to learn, to our sorrow and shame, how useless such attempts are? We have also learned how near God's hand is to deliver those who call on Him out of the prison of self-inflicted distress.
Turn the verse around, and the same reach looks different:
The deepest self-searching — the most thorough sifting of all that the heart holds — goes together with the fullest enjoyment of assured peace and confidence in God. His right hand holds that soul in the grip of sure salvation. His precious thoughts of peace rest on it through every experience of its pilgrim journey.
Nothing about that ought to frighten someone who belongs to God:
There is no terror in this remembrance of God's all-pervading presence. For He who fills all things is the Saviour of His own (Eph. 4:10). The Searcher of His people's hearts is also the Redeemer of their souls.
Here commentators press a careful distinction. Knowing that God is everywhere does not, by itself, settle anyone.
The sense that God knows everything and is everywhere cannot provide that. The opposite is true. God's eye on him is no comfort. He cannot escape from under that eye, wherever he goes. To whatever place he might take himself, that eye would still be on him (verses 1-12). 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.
The same presence meets us in Christ:
Scripture also bears witness that our Lord Jesus Christ is present everywhere, as God alone can be. How sweet the comfort His living words bring to everyone God's grace has saved: "Behold, I am with you always."
- Flight. The verse pictures the fastest, loneliest escape a person could try: sunrise speed to the far edge of the sea.
- Failure. Jonah tried it. He sailed west when God sent him east. The same instinct still drives us into self-inflicted distress.
- Hand. What waits at the end of the run is a hand that leads and holds — the Searcher of hearts is also the Redeemer of souls.
- Relief. Knowing God is everywhere brings no comfort by itself. His revealed thoughts do. Our own thoughts about God did not settle the psalmist.
- Promise. The reach that cannot be escaped becomes the reach that cannot fail: "Behold, I am with you always."
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
The psalm has just tried every hiding place a person could imagine and found God already there. This verse turns the escape around: God's hand does not only find the runaway at the far edge of the world; it leads him and holds him there.
Verses 7 to 12 record an escape attempt that fails at every point. One writer traces why:
When the godly man thinks of how he has failed in his responsibility, God's complete knowledge overwhelms him. He would gladly run from God's presence and escape His all-searching gaze. But he finds that God is not only all-knowing; He is also everywhere. There is no escape from the Spirit of God. No place can shut God out. No solitude is without Him. No darkness can hide anyone from Him.
Verse 9 speaks of the wings of the morning and the far edge of the sea. One writer explains what those pictures mean, and how God's hand turns being alone into dependence on Him:
In the next section it is relationship with the God who is everywhere, and that in dependence. The wings of the dawn and the farthest parts of the sea seem to carry the thought of complete solitude. But "even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me."
The verse names two things His hand does, not one. It leads, and it holds — and the holding is a matter of sheer strength:
Someone may go as far as possible over the sea, where no one lives. Even there God's hand will lead him, and His right hand of power will hold him.
Jonah was a prophet sent to the city of Nineveh. He took a ship the other way, "from the presence of the LORD." One writer explains what he could not have meant by that:
This cannot mean that he fled from the presence of the One he knew to be everywhere. David's psalm, which says this plainly, was already in Israel's hands, and Jonah must have known it… He did not flee from the presence of the Lord in the sense of escaping His knowledge and authority. It means that he left the land of Israel where the LORD dwelt; he fled from the service He had given him.
The hand that reaches the runaway is also the hand that lifts him out. One writer turns Jonah's story onto the reader:
Have we not, like him, tried to go west when God told us to go east?… Have we not had to learn, to our sorrow and shame, how useless such tries are? And have we not also learned how near God's hand is to deliver those who call on Him out of the prison of distress they brought on themselves? That deliverance comes as soon as we, in the fish's belly, have learned the lesson God was teaching us there.
The same hand feels different to different people. To a man who wants distance from God, being unable to get away is torment:
The state of man by nature is "without God," even though God may bless him with all natural things. He would be glad to be out of God's presence if he could, but in one sense he cannot. "If I take the wings of the morning…" You cannot fly from His presence; yet you are miserable in it.
For the one who belongs to Him, the identical facts read as care:
Here we see the people of God in the light of God, standing in His presence. He knows everything, and He is everywhere… And what a comfort to know that He knows and that He sees! He is about us, around us, with us everywhere. His hand leads, His hand holds up the saint, and darkness and light are both alike to Him.
- Flight — The psalm tries every exit and finds them shut. No height, no depth, no distance, no darkness lies outside God's reach.
- Reach — The wings of the morning and the far edge of the sea picture total solitude. That is the very place where His hand takes hold.
- Grip — His hand does two things there: it leads the way and it holds fast, and the holding is His right hand of power.
- Rescue — Jonah proves the point. A runaway escapes his assignment, never his God, and the hand that finds him lifts him out of the trouble he made.
- Response — For a man set on getting away, that nearness is misery. For one who belongs to God, the same nearness is comfort everywhere he goes.
And if I say, Surely darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night;
The psalmist has already tried heaven, Sheol — the place of the dead — and the far side of the sea — and found God in each. Verse 11 is his last idea: if height and distance cannot hide him, perhaps darkness can.
The verse is first a confession about us. One writer reads the whole psalm as the record of a man on whom God's light rises, and who does not enjoy it at first:
In Psalm 139 we have a man upon whom the light of God arises, but we find him at first very unwilling to be searched by that light. He would fly from it if he knew where a hiding place could be found. He says, "If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there!" … He has to learn there is no hiding place from God, and that God knows him perfectly.
Height and distance failed him. Here the problem is exposure, and the answer turns on what darkness is:
The wings of the dawn and the uttermost parts of the sea seem to convey the thought of the greatest possible solitude. But "even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me." In the third section, exposure is what he cannot escape: darkness and light are relative only to man; for God there is no difference.
Darkness is not neutral ground outside God's reach. He made it, just as He made light:
Or if he looks for cover in the dark, that is not darkness to God. Light and darkness make no difference to Him. He is the Creator of darkness, just as He is of light. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Still, it is folly for them to try to hide from God this way.
The man who wrote these words had already tested the dark, and lost. He hid his sin in the matter of Uriah, and God brought it into the open:
David's flagrant sin in the matter of Uriah the Hittite was committed in secret. But God knew the whole sordid story, and exposed his guilt to all Israel. The king said within himself, "Surely the darkness shall cover me." But he had to learn that the darkness itself could not hide from Jehovah. To his shame, he found his secret sin revealed in the light of the sun. Like Moses, David had to say to God, "You have set our iniquities before You; our secret sins in the light of Your presence."
The searching this verse tries to escape has a purpose. One writer ties it to the moment God gives a sinner life:
We can never get from under this searching process… When God gives life to a sinner, dead in trespasses and sins, He makes him know what he is. He is not only a sinner by acts of disobedience, but a sinner by nature, and sin "dwells" in him. And this He does by searching him, and winnowing his paths, and making him, in measure, see himself, even as God sees him.
This verse is not the psalm's last word. By the end, the same man asks for the very searching he once tried to escape:
The first section speaks of Jehovah's omniscience simply, as felt by one who is in awe of it. In the second section that fear breaks out into the cry of one who would gladly escape to the ends of the earth, or into Sheol itself, to be free from it. But he knows well that this is impossible… In the fourth section he is now with God against the evil shown in the world. From what he fears and hates within himself, the presence of God now becomes his sanctuary and refuge. He invites the searching Eye which once he dreaded.
- Dread. The verse is a man's last attempt to escape God's light — he would fly from it if he knew where a hiding place could be found.
- Dark. Darkness and light are relative only to man; for God there is no difference, because He created both.
- David. He tested this himself: what he did in secret in the matter of Uriah, God exposed to all Israel.
- Deliverance. That same searching is how God shows a sinner himself, as God sees him — not just wrong acts, but a wrong nature.
- Delight. By the psalm's end, the presence he tried to flee has become his refuge, and he invites the searching Eye he once dreaded.
Even darkness hideth not from thee, and the night shineth as the day the darkness is as the light.
The psalm moves in stages, and this verse closes the second one. Writers describe verses 7–12 as the section where the psalmist tests every possible escape route and finds each one already occupied.
What first reaches the soul is the knowledge of Jehovah, intimate and searching, and it makes the soul shrink before Him (vv. 1-6). It is the Light that makes the truth of everything clear. Where nothing in a person answers to it from God, the effort is to flee from His presence (vv. 7-12). But this is impossible! The heavens, Sheol, earth's unreachable places, or darkness itself, all bear the same testimony. How deeply solemn a thought for one who wants to escape that Presence, and to whom darkness would be a resource!
Another writer labels the three movements — God knowing everything, being everywhere, holding all power:
And so we see, as in Psalm 139, the Trinity is omniscient (verses 1 to 6); omnipresent (verses 7 to 12); and omnipotent (verses 13 to end).
Night is a real limit — for creatures. The verse says it is not a limit for God, and one writer draws the distinction exactly:
In the third, exposure is what he cannot escape: darkness and light are relative only to man; for God there is no difference.
These are not the calm words of a spectator. They come from a man who wanted to get out of God's reach and could not.
In Psalm 139 we have a man upon whom the light of God arises, but at first he is very unwilling to have that light search him. He would fly from it if he could find a hiding place… He has to learn there is no hiding-place from God, and that God knows him perfectly.
One writer calls that searching God's own way of dealing with a sinner He is bringing to life:
We can never get from under this searching process… When God gives life to a sinner who is dead in trespasses and sins, He makes him know what it is to be a sinner — not only by acts of disobedience, but by nature, with sin that "dwells" in him. And this He does by searching him, and sifting his paths, and making him, in measure, see himself, even as God sees him.
The psalm is David's, and one commentator ties the words back to the worst night of his life — his adultery with Bathsheba and the killing of her husband Uriah, arranged in private.
David committed his flagrant sin in the matter of Uriah the Hittite in secret. But God knew the whole sordid story, and exposed his guilt to all Israel (2 Sam. 12:12). The king said within himself, Surely the darkness shall cover me. He had to learn that darkness hides nothing from Jehovah, and, to his shame, God brought his secret sin into the light of the sun (Ps. 139:11-12).
The psalm does not end where verse 12 leaves it. The same eye that the psalmist first fled from he later asks to come closer.
The first section speaks of Jehovah's omniscience simply, as realized by one who is in awe of it. In the second section that fear breaks out into the cry of one who would gladly escape to the ends of the earth, or into Sheol itself, to be free from it. But he knows well that this is impossible. In the third section there is a change… The preciousness of God's thoughts toward him now takes possession of him. That the unsleeping Eye is on him, sleeping or waking, becomes only happiness… He invites the searching Eye which once he dreaded.
What makes the change possible is who this all-seeing One turns out to be:
There is no terror in this remembrance of God's all-pervading presence. For He who thus fills all things is the Saviour of His own (Eph. 4:10). The Searcher of His people's hearts is likewise the Redeemer of their souls… We cannot truly grow in the knowledge of God unless He brings us consciously under His eye, as in this Psalm. But this scrutiny our flesh instinctively avoids.
- Flight — Verses 7–12 trace one long escape run: heaven, the world of the dead, the far sea, and at last the dark. Every door is already occupied.
- Failure — Dark and light differ for us, not for God. The night hides nothing from Him.
- Fear — David had counted on the dark to cover him. God brought his secret sin out into daylight.
- Facing — God searches a person to make him see himself as God sees him. Our nature avoids that look, but growth depends on staying under it.
- Freedom — The psalmist ends up inviting the eye he once ran from. The One who searches the heart is the One who redeems the soul.