Psalms 139:7-17

7 Where can I go [to get away] from your Spirit? Where can I run [to get away] from you?

8 If I go up to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, you are there.

9 If I climb upward on the rays of the morning sun [or] land on the most distant shore of the sea where the sun sets,

10 even there your hand would guide me and your right hand would hold on to me.

11 If I say, "Let the darkness hide me and let the light around me turn into night,"

12 even the darkness is not too dark for you. Night is as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same [to you].

13 You alone created my inner being. You knitted me together inside my mother.

14 I will give thanks to you because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made. Your works are miraculous, and my soul is fully aware of this.

15 My bones were not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, when I was being skillfully woven in an underground workshop.

16 Your eyes saw me when I was only a fetus. Every day [of my life] was recorded in your book before one of them had taken place.

17 How precious are your thoughts concerning me, O God! How vast in number they are!

Psalms 139:7-17 Meaning and Commentary

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. This psalm was written by David, when he lay under the reproach and calumnies of men, who laid false things to his charge; things he was not conscious of either in the time of Saul's persecution of him, or when his son Absalom rebelled against him: and herein he appeals to the heart searching and rein trying God for his innocence; and, when settled on his throne, delivered it to the master of music, to make use of it on proper occasions. According to the Syriac title of the psalm, the occasion of it was Shimei, the son of Gera, reproaching and cursing him as a bloody man, 2 Samuel 16:5. Theodoret takes it to be a prophecy of Josiah, and supposes that he is represented as speaking throughout the psalm. Aben Ezra observes, that this is the most glorious and excellent psalm in all the book: a very excellent one it is: but whether the most excellent, it is hard to say. It treats of some of the most glorious of the divine perfections; omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Arama says, the argument of it is God's particular knowledge of men, and his providence over their affairs.