Psalms 139 Footnotes

Ps 139 This is a profound meditation on how the Lord knows everything about his human creation (vv. 1-6) and how he is present everywhere in his creation (vv. 7-12). It was the Lord who made us and planned for our lives (vv. 13-18). The meditation prompts the immediate response of loyalty to God (vv. 19-24).

139:7-12 The speaker’s first impulse was to flee—but where? God is present everywhere. There was no place he could go to get away from this penetrating knowledge—not even to the abode of the dead (v. 8). But he began to see that God’s “hand,” which formerly seemed to entrap him, was really leading him (v. 10) into his presence. Wherever he went—even to remote places of the earth or to Sheol, where it seemed God would not follow him—he did not want to be there without the light of his presence.

139:16 The verse declares that, even in the womb, the child was being formed under the supervision and by the active involvement of God who already had planned the course of his life. This statement has much to say about how people must give human life in the womb the same loving care that God—whose Spirit gives life (2Co 3:3)—bestows upon it. The passage is poetry, but is still revealed truth. The passage also stresses the sovereignty of God more than any other psalm; people are not the masters of their own destiny, but are in the hand of the Lord.