Psalm 139:1

The Knowledge of God

For the [music] director. Of David. A psalm.

1 O Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know [me].

Psalm 139:1 Meaning and Commentary

Psalms 139:1

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known [me].
] The omniscience of God reaches to all persons and things; but the psalmist only takes notice of it as respecting himself. God knows all men in general, and whatever belongs to them; he knows his own people in a special manner; and he knows their particular persons, as David and others: and this knowledge of God is considered after the manner of men, as if it was the fruit of search, to denote the exquisiteness of it; as a judge searches out a cause, a physician the nature of a disease, a philosopher the reason of things; who many times, after all their inquiries, fail in their knowledge; but the Lord never does: his elect lie in the ruins of the fall, and among the men of the world; he searches them out and finds them; for be knows where they are, and the time of finding them, and can distinguish them in a crowd of men from others, and notwithstanding the sad case they are in, and separates them from them; and he searches into them, into their most inward part, and knows them infinitely better than their nearest relations, friends and acquaintance do; he knows that of them and in them, which none but they themselves know; their thoughts, and the sin that dwells in them: yea, he knows more of them and in them than they themselves, ( Jeremiah 17:9 Jeremiah 17:10 ) . And he knows them after another manner than he does other men: there are some whom in a sense he knows not; but these he knows, as he did David, so as to approve of, love and delight in, ( Matthew 7:23 ) ( 2 Timothy 2:19 ) .

Psalm 139:1 In-Context

1 O Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know [me].

2 You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought from afar.

3 You search out my wandering and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 For [there is] not a word [yet] on my tongue, [but] behold, O Yahweh, you know it completely.

5 You barricade me behind and in front, and set your hand upon me.

Footnotes

• [a] The Hebrew Bible counts the superscription as the first verse of the psalm