Psalms 139:1-14

1 God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand.

2 I'm an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking.

3 You know when I leave and when I get back; I'm never out of your sight.

4 You know everything I'm going to say before I start the first sentence.

5 I look behind me and you're there, then up ahead and you're there, too - your reassuring presence, coming and going.

6 This is too much, too wonderful - I can't take it all in!

7 Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? to be out of your sight?

8 If I climb to the sky, you're there! If I go underground, you're there!

9 If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon,

10 You'd find me in a minute - you're already there waiting!

11 Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I'm immersed in the light!"

12 It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.

13 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb.

14 I thank you, High God - you're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration - what a creation!

Psalms 139:1-14 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.