1 For the lead player, a David psalm. LORD, You searched me and You know,
2It is You Who know when I sit and I rise,
You fathom my thoughts from afar.
3 My path and my lair You winnow,
and with all my ways are familiar.
4For there is no word on my tongue
but that You, O LORD, wholly know it.
5From behind and in front You shaped me,
and You set Your palm upon me.
6Knowledge is too wondrous for me,
high above—I cannot attain it.
7Where can I go from Your spirit,
and where from before You flee?
8If I soar to the heavens, You are there,
if I bed down in Sheol—there You are.
9If I take wing with the dawn,
if I dwell at the ends of the sea,
10there, too, Your hand leads me,
and Your right hand seizes me.
11Should I say, “Yes, darkness will swathe me,
and the night will be light for me,
12Darkness itself will not darken for You,
and the night will light up like the day,
the dark and the light will be one.
13For You created my innermost parts,
wove me in my mother’s womb.
14 I acclaim You, for fearsomely I am set apart,
wondrous are Your acts,
and my being deeply knows it.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
when I was made in a secret place,
16 My unformed shape Your eyes did see,
and in Your book all was written down.
17 As for me, how weighty are Your thoughts, O God,
how numerous their sum.
18 Should I count them, they would be more than the sand.
I awake, and am still with You.
19Would You but slay the wicked, God—
O men of blood, turn away from me!—
20Who say Your name to scheme,
Your enemies falsely swear.
21Why, those who hate You, LORD, I hate,
and those against You I despise.
22With utter hatred I do hate them,
they become my enemies.
23Search me, God, and know my heart,
24And see if a vexing way be in me,
and lead me on the eternal way.
PSALM 139 NOTES
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1. LORD, You searched me and You know. These words inaugurate one of the most remarkably introspective psalms in the canonical collection. Although the invocation of bloody-minded enemies in verses 19 and 20 indicates a connection with the psalms of supplication, this poem is essentially a meditation on God’s searching knowledge of man’s innermost thoughts, on the limitations of human knowledge, and on God’s inescapable presence throughout the created world. The reflection on the wonder of man’s creatureliness in verses 13–16 is reminiscent of Job 10, and certain linguistic features of the Hebrew recall if not Job directly then the late period in which Job was composed.
3. My path and my lair You winnow. The word represented as “lair,” rovʿa, is unusual; interchangeable with the root r-b-ts, it generally indicates the place where an animal lies down. The verb here, from the root z-r-h, reflects an extension of its agricultural meaning, an extended sense also in usage in English (“winnow” in the sense of “to analyze and critically assess”).
5. From behind and in front You shaped me. The verb could also mean something like “besiege” or “bring into straits,” but the sense of shaping or fashioning like a potter seems more likely here, especially as the poem moves ahead to the imagining of the forming of the embryo in the womb. In this understanding, “You set Your palm upon me” is not a menacing act but rather the gesture of the potter.
9. If I take wing with the dawn, / if I dwell at the ends of the sea. Some interpreters have understood this as a simple indication of east and west (a different Hebrew term for “dawn” means “east,” and “sea” can sometimes mean “west”). The image of the line, however, is more vividly mythological than that. The speaker imagines taking wing with the dawn as it appears in the east, then soaring with the sun on its westward path to the limits of the imagined world, “the ends [singular in the Hebrew] of the sea.”
11. darkness will swathe me. This fantasy of being enveloped in darkness picks up the idea of bedding down in Sheol, the underworld.
and the night will be light for me. That is, I will immerse myself in darkness, acting as though the pitch black of night could be my light, could serve instead of the illumination of daylight existence.
13. innermost parts. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “kidneys.” Though the kidneys are generally thought of as the seat of conscience in the Bible, the context here (see the parallel verset, “wove me in my mother’s womb”) suggests that in this case the term is a synecdoche for all the intricate inner organs of the human creature. The location in the womb is associatively triggered by the idea of being enveloped in darkness expressed in verses 11 and 12.
14. for fearsomely I am set apart. The Hebrew ki noraʾot nifleiyti is not clear. Most interpreters understand nifleiyti as a variant spelling of nifleiyta, a verb whose root means “wonder” and render it here as “wondrously made.” But there is scant evidence that this verb can mean “wondrously made” rather than simply “was wondrous.” Spelled as it is with a heh and not an aleph, the verb means “to be set apart” or “to be distinct.” That meaning might be appropriate for the speaker’s reflection on how he evolved in the womb from an unformed embryo to a particular human being with the consciousness of his own individuality.
15. knitted in the utmost depths. The literal sense of the Hebrew phrase is “in the depths of the earth.” With the movement from the enveloping darkness of a cosmic netherworld to the womb earlier in the poem, at this point there is an archetypal association between womb and the chthonic depths. (The Aramaic Targum renders this phrase flatly as kereisa deʾima, “mother’s womb.”) This translation chooses an English phrase that might suggest both womb and netherworld.
16. and in Your book all was written down. The Hebrew is obscure—an obscurity compounded by the introduction of a plural (literally, “they all are written down”).
The days were fashioned. The textual difficulties continue. If the received text is correct, it might mean “the future days of the child to be born were already given shape in the womb.”
not one of them did lack. The enigmatic Hebrew text says literally, “and not one in them.” The verb “did lack”—in Hebrew, this would be yeḥsar—is added as an interpretive guess.
17. weighty. The Hebrew root y-q-r more often means “precious,” but the sense of “weighty” registers an Aramaic influence, reflecting the late composition of this psalm.
18. I awake. The effort of many modern interpreters to link the verb with qets, “end,” is dubious, because heqitsoti elsewhere always means “I awake.” What the poet may be imagining is that after the long futile effort of attempting to count God’s infinite thoughts, he drifts off in exhaustion, then awakes to discover that God’s eternal presence, with all those endless divine thoughts, is still with him.
19. God. The name used here is ʾeloah, which occurs only in poetry and is especially common in Job.
20. say Your name. The Hebrew says only “say You,” but “name,” as the parallelism with swearing falsely (the same idiom as in the Decalogue) indicates, is implied.
21. those against you. Some scholars, with an eye to the symmetry of expression, prefer to read—instead of the Masoretic tequmemekha—a noun cognate with the verb, mitqotetekha, “those who despise You.”
23. Search me, God, and know my heart. The echo of verse 1 marks a closure through envelope structure.
my mind. The Hebrew says “my thoughts,” but because a different word is used from the one that occurs in verses 2 and 17, the translation opts for “mind.”
24. vexing. Others understand this as “idolatrous,” but the word for “idol” is ʿetsev, whereas the form appearing here, ʿotsev, would usually mean “pain,” “sorrow,” “vexation.” Wayward thoughts are imagined to vex God.
lead me. The very verb that in verse 10 had an ambiguous sense, perhaps of entrapment, here at the end is wholly positive.