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:
Hamilton SmithThinking 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:
James BoydThis 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:
Samuel Ridout"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:
Truth & TestimonyDavid 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:
The Christian's FriendThere 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:
Numerical Bible NotesIn 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:
J. N. DarbyI 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:
Frederick W GrantHere, 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:
Hamilton SmithThinking 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:
Frederick W Grant"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:
Samuel RidoutIt 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:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHe 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:
C E StuartThe 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.