Today’s Passage: Psalm 139
This psalm holds one truth up to the light and turns it slowly. God knows David, all the way through. Before he asks anything of God, David lays down three certainties: that God knows him, that God made him, and that there is nowhere he could go to escape Him. Only then does he ask, and the asking reaches back for the very first word of the psalm again: chaqar, pronounced khaw-KAHR. Strong's H2713, to search out, to examine, to probe deeply. This is not a passing glance. The word means to penetrate, to examine, to get to the very bottom of a thing, and it is used elsewhere of a miner digging after ore or a scout searching out a land. David is not saying that God has merely noticed him. He is saying that God has done that deep work on his whole inner life, and that the result of it is those two quiet words, “known me.” Sitting and rising, thinking and walking, lying down and speaking: no ordinary hour of his life is left outside it. me. He is not wondering whether a person might manage to hide from God, because the psalm has already settled that question. And it is not three separate lessons, one about God’s knowing, one about fleeing, one about the womb. It is a single claim, said from every side. He knows.
As you read, hold this: You have searched me and known me.
Context For the choirmaster, of David
“For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.” That heading is part of the text itself, not a note added to it later. What follows runs to twenty-four verses, and the one request David finally makes waits all the way until the end. Everything that comes before it is already true long before he ever asks.
Psalm 139:1-6 (BSB)
¹ For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. O LORD, You have searched me and known me. ² You know when I sit and when I rise; You understand my thoughts from afar. ³ You search out my path and my lying down; You are aware of all my ways. ⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, O LORD. ⁵ You hem me in behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me. ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Every verb in these verses reaches into a part of life a person might assume was his own private ground. His posture, sitting and rising. His thoughts, understood from far off. His path and his lying down. His speech, known before the tongue has even moved. He is hemmed in behind and before, with a hand laid gently upon him. Such knowledge, David says, is too wonderful for him. He does not sound like a man being hunted. He sounds like a man who has waded out past his depth.
Psalm 139:7-12 (BSB)
⁷ Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? ⁸ If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. ⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, ¹⁰ even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast. ¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me”— ¹² even the darkness is not dark to You, but the night shines like the day, for darkness is as light to You.
The heavens, Sheol, the wings of the dawn, the farthest sea, and the darkness itself: David reaches for every “away” that an old map could offer. The height and the depth, both far horizons, and the dark that does not even depend on distance. To each one the psalm gives the same answer. You are there. Your hand will hold me fast. This is not the picture of a search party closing in. It is a companion who was never once left behind.
Verse 11 gives voice to the quiet hope that at least in the dark a person might finally go unseen, and verse 12 closes that door too: the darkness is as light to You. There was never a corner of a life that He was not already sharing. The right hand that holds is not a hand anyone slips free of by running. He holds, and no one gets out of that hand by running from it.
Psalm 139:13-16 (BSB)
¹³ For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well. ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. ¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be.
Study notes Known before there was a body
God’s knowing of David did not begin when David was old enough to think or to walk. You formed my inmost being. You knit me together. Your eyes saw my unformed body. This is the deliberate making of a person by God, not some accident He happened to notice after the fact. Before there was anything in David that could have earned His attention, God was already making him, already watching over him, already writing out all his days. To be known, then, never started as an achievement. It started as a gift. And so verse 14 answers the whole of it with praise rather than with unease.
Psalm 139:17-18 (BSB)
¹⁷ How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God, how vast is their sum! ¹⁸ If I were to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand; and when I awake, I am still with You.
Here the direction turns around. It is no longer only what God knows of David, but what David treasures about God: how precious His thoughts are, how vast their sum, more in number than the grains of sand. Verse 6 had called this knowledge too wonderful, and these two verses land warmer still. And when I awake, David says, I am still with You. Even sleep does not interrupt it. He wakes to the same presence that was already there when his eyes closed.
Psalm 139:19-22 (BSB)
¹⁹ O God, that You would slay the wicked—away from me, you bloodthirsty men— ²⁰ who speak of You deceitfully; Your enemies take Your name in vain. ²¹ Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD, and detest those who rise against You? ²² I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them as my enemies.
The turn here is sharp, and it is not one to hurry past. It should not be twisted into a license for private revenge, and it should not be sanded smooth just because the rest of the psalm is so tender. What David does is bring real evil to God and leave it in His hands. Bloodthirsty men. God’s own Name taken in vain. David does not reach for the sword himself; he asks God to be the One who acts. Even this psalm, which has only just come up out of the wonder of the womb, will not pretend that the world has no wickedness in it. A believer’s grief over great evil is given somewhere honest to go, and that somewhere is God.
Psalm 139:23-24 (BSB)
²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. ²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting.
Now the first word of the psalm comes back, this time as a request. Search me. Twenty-two verses have already established that God knows everything there is to know, and a prayer resting on that could easily end in dread. Instead David asks for more of it. Because God already knows him through and through, nothing is risked by the asking, and everything is offered up: examine me, correct me, lead me. See if there is any offensive way in me. Hiding was always going to fail. To be searched, and then led in the way everlasting, is the one move left that answers the psalm’s very first line.
You have searched me and known me.