Psalm 139 Bible Study
Who am I? And why am I here? These are questions we hear asked every day. Many of us may have faced an identity crisis. Perhaps at some time in your life you may have wondered this. I know I have. The Bible tells us that God is sovereign and knows us intimately both in this Psalm and in many other books and verses. We will look at some of these as we study this Psalm.
The Psalm divides easily into 4 sections of 6 verses each. Many translations split them this way into paragraphs or sections. I am using the NIV simply because I prefer it over some of the ones that I use But there are some references that note the New American Standard Bible. (NASB) The New American is one of the best translations but in certain sections it seems to me is a little stiff, that’s why for the most part I quite from the NIV translation-And the (NLT) New Living translation is Good as well.
Vs. 1 “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.”
The Hebrew word for searched means “to investigate.” When someone is investigated by the FBI for security reasons or for a crime they are known as thoroughly as is humanly possible. David says he has been investigated by God and known thoroughly by Him.
Vs. 2 “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar”.
God knows everything, both my passive life (when I sit down), and my active life (when I rise up). Whether I am resting or working you know me.
And, you know my subconscious life – the level of life from which my thoughts arise. You understand my thoughts even before they get to the surface. In other words, you know how I think and what I think about. God even understands the thoughts which come uninvited, in the constant flow to my mind.
Vs. 3 “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways”. – The New American says, “You scrutinize my path”. The King James says, “Thou compassest my path”. None of these translations really says what the original Hebrew says. When I looked up the word “compass” in the concordance, the original word meant “to surround”. In other words, “You surround my way”, everything I do, same idea as in verse 5. You know the way I choose to go and the habits of my life. “You know me, Lord, intimately inside and out.”
Vs. 4-5 “Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O lord.
You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”
God knows what you are going to say, before you say it. In other words he says, God speaks my language. That’s true in any language, God speaks them all. That is what impresses the Psalmist, God is active, past, present and future
In the exodus from Egypt, God went before them to guide them and later was behind them in the pillar of fire to protect them from the Egyptians who followed to take them back to Egypt. Other places in Scripture it refers to God surrounding his people.
Vs. 5 “Laid you hand upon me”, as in the sense of guiding him.
Vs. 6 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”
The same word translated as “wonderful” is used in Deuteronomy 17:8 as “difficult”. In other words “such knowledge is too hard for me”.
In the second paragraph the Psalmist seem to be asking, “how near is God to me”?
Vs. 7 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”
What does he mean by this? Does he want to escape from God? No, perhaps when he was plagued by his guilt of sin and knew he had disappointed God he may have felt like this, haven’t we all.
Vs. 8 “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths (grave or nether world) you are there”. Compare Jeremiah 23:24
In heaven of course God is there. And even though I go to hell I still will not escape God. Of course, other Scriptures make clear that there is a vast difference between the experience of God for one who is in Heaven and for one who is in Sheol, or hell. In heaven we will experience to the fullness the love, compassion, glory and warmth of God; the positives of God. In hell it is the other way around. There men experience the absence of God’s love, the dark side of it, the wrath of God; his negatives. But it is still God, that is the point.
God owns and runs his universe and there is no escaping his presence. That is not a fearful thought. No distance can separate him from God. Romans 8 backs this up in the New Testament side.
Vs. 9-10 “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”
What does he mean, “the wings of the morning”? Perhaps referring to the beauty of the sunrise. The “far side of the sea”, the largest body of water David would have ever seen was the Mediterranean Sea, and he had no doubt heard the sailors talk about their travels, and that to him must have seemed like quite an adventure, but even here he acknowledges that God has gone before and acknowledges in verse 10 that even there God’s hand will guide him.
Vs. 11-12 “If I say, ‘surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you”.
Mankind has been hiding from God ever since the fall. A lot of the crimes are committed at night, because the darkness covers the crime. In 1 John, John says in 1:5 “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all”.
Interestingly, mankind has just discovered within our lifetime how to use night vision goggles to turn night into day. Paul reminded the Athenians in Acts that “God is not far from any one of us”. He is but a touch away.
Vs. 13 If someone asks, “how do I know this is true”? The Psalmist tells us by deduction from the design of our bodies.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb”. The KJV says “Thou has possessed my reins”. That is not a very good translation in modern English – the word reins in the Hebrew means kidneys (inward parts).
God knit us together one cell (literally one atom) at a time. This verse and the ones following are used by Christians to oppose abortion.
Vs. 14 “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Here he is examining himself, and he is amazed at the complexity of the forces in his own body which are essential to life, but over which he obviously has no control, yet they are essential to his life. He looked at his heart and lungs which work without him thinking about it, and realized the truth – God had done a wonderful thing.
Compare his observations to the observations of an atheist. Any atheist who is honest would have to admit that our bodies could not have evolved from slime, or lower life forms. That is why the Bible says, “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God”. Dr. J. Vernon McGee of Thru The Bible says that phrase means ‘insane’. Literally it means an empty person.
You have but to look around you at everything you see to know that everything is fearfully and wonderfully made. I thought of this recently when looking at the different types of food that God has made for us. He could have said when he made the grass, we will just let man graze like the cattle. That’s so much simpler than making all the different types of vegetables, but God did not do that.
Vs. 15-16a “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body”.
The frame is the foundation of the body, the bone and muscle system. Without this we would be a mass of gelatin. The term ‘woven’ or ‘skillfully’ wrought is the same root that we get our word embroidery. It describes the delicate embroidery of the body, the things that tie us together so that one organ supports another and everything works like it should. It is such a perfect picture that Paul in Romans 12 compares the Church to the body.
Vs 16a– literally in the Hebrew, “Your eyes beheld my rolled up substance” it pictures the embryo all rolled up, – NASB is the closest, it calls it ‘unformed substance’, and the NIV calls it an unformed body.
In all the above verses, David is talking about the design of the creator. That is a powerful argument for a creator. The evolutionist has never successfully answered that argument, how something so delicate as the baby’s ear could form by chance.
Vs. 16b “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”.
God had our lives planned out before even one day came into being, and still allow us free will within that plan. How does that work – I haven’t a clue! But according to this we are alloted a certain number of days.
This is of course the basis for all biblical prophecy. How is it that an event can occur in the life of our Lord which was predicted by the prophets 500, 600, or 1,000 years before – and not only by one prophet, but by several? David was aware of this (he was a prophet). And he was made aware of God’s knowledge of him.
Vs. 17-18 “How precious to me (concerning me) (The NIV) are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you”.
I think this is a better translation if you look at the context of the verses around this one. Compare this with JEREMIAH 29:11– God’s plans for us!!
Vs. 19-22 “If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies”.
All of a sudden, the Psalmist interjects – Lord, kill your enemies!!
Does this seem out of place to you?
How does this square with the New Testament standard of ‘Love your enemies’, ‘Pray for those who despitefully use you’ etc?
First, we need to recognize that everything that is declared in the Psalms is not necessarily a reflection of God’s will. Sometimes when we listen to a believers experience it will not always reflect God’s truth, only man’s viewpoint.
After David’s reflection on all of the above, he finally asks God for something. When we are aware of being near God, we do that too. We ask for something. We just need to be careful of what we ask for.
Second, The psalmist’s request falls short even of the O.T. standard.
Lev. 19:18 “Love your neighbor as yourself”. It seems that the psalmist has not learned this. In his honesty, he says, ‘Lord, it seems to me the easiest way for you to handle this problem of evil would be to slay the wicked’.
He doesn’t seem to be concerned about what they do to him, but in verse 20, what they say about God.
1. they speak with evil intent
2. they use God’s name in vain
3. they rise up against God
In other words, they are religious hypocrites. The sharpest words Jesus ever spoke were against the religious hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who were using God’s name for evil.
David honestly felt the hatred of God against sin, but not yet the love of God for the sinner. That is probably why he concludes with these words:
Vs. 23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting”.
In verse 1, he says ‘Lord you have searched me and known me’
In verse 23, he could be saying, “Lord, I don’t understand this problem of evil. It appears to me the easiest way is for you to eliminate the evil man, But Lord, I also know that I don’t think very clearly, and I don’t often have the right answer. There could easily be in me a way of pain”.
Verse 23 and 24 are a beautiful prayer and one that we should all pray often.
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LORD I THANK U 4 GIVING ME THIS CHAPTER ALONG TIME AGO 2 HELP ME KNOW WHO I AM IN U AND NOW I AM ABLE 2 SHARE WITH OTHERS AS WELL LUV U GOD 4 ALL THAT U DO 4 ME!!!!!
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