1 Jehovah, Thou hast searched me and known [me].
2 Thou, Thou knowest my down-sitting and my up-rising,
Thou understandest my thought afar off.
3 My walking and my lying down Thou siftest,
And with all my ways Thou art familiar.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
--Behold, Thou, Jehovah, knowest it all.
5 Behind and before Thou hast shut me in,
And hast laid upon me Thy hand.
6 [Such] knowledge is too wonderful for me,
Too high, I am not able for it.
7 Whither shall I go from Thy spirit?
And whither from Thy face shall I flee?
8 If I climb heaven, there art Thou,
Or make Sheol my bed, lo, Thou [art there].
9 [If] I lift up the wings of the dawn,
[If] I dwell at the farthest end of the sea,
10 Even there Thy hand shall lead me,
And Thy right hand shall hold me.
11 And [if] I say, "Only let darkness cover me,
And the light about me be [as] night,"
12 Even darkness darkens not to Thee,
And night lightens like day;
As is the darkness, so is the light.
13 For Thou, Thou hast formed my reins,
Thou hast woven me together in my mother's womb.
14 I will thank Thee for that in dread fashion I am wondrously made
Wondrous are Thy works,
And my soul knows [it] well.
15 My bones were not hid from Thee,
When I was made in secret,
[And] wrought like embroidery [as] in the depths of the earth.
16 Thine eyes saw my shapeless mass,
And in Thy book were they all written,
The days [that] were fashioned,
And yet there was not one among them.
17 And to me how precious are Thy thoughts, O God,
How great is their sum!
18 Would I reckon them, they outnumber the sand;
I awake--and am still with Thee.
19 Oh, if Thou wouldest smite the wicked, O God!
--And [ye] men of blood, depart from me,
20 Who rebel against Thee with wicked deeds,
They lift up [themselves] against Thee vainly (?)
21 Do not I hate them which hate Thee, Jehovah?
And am not I grieved with those who rise against Thee?
22 With perfect hatred I hate them,
They are counted for enemies to me.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart,
Try me and know my thoughts,
24 And see if there be any way of grief in me,
And lead me in a way everlasting.
This is the noblest utterance in the Psalter of pure contemplative
theism, animated and not crushed by the thought of God's omniscience
and omnipresence. No less striking than the unequalled force and
sublimity with which the psalm hymns the majestic attributes of an
all-filling, all-knowing, all-creating God, is the firmness with which
the singer's personal relation to that God is grasped. Only in the last
verses is there reference to other men. In the earlier parts of the
psalm, there are but two beings in the universe--God and the psalmist.
With impressive reiteration, God's attributes are gazed on in their
bearing on him. Not mere omniscience, but a knowledge which knows
_him_ altogether, not mere omnipresence, but a presence which _he_
can nowhere escape, not mere creative power, but a power which shaped
_him_, fill and thrill the psalmist's soul. This is no cold theism,
but vivid religion. Conscience and the consciousness of individual
relation to God penetrate and vitalise the whole. Hence the sudden turn
to prayer against evil men and for the singer's direction in the right
way, which closes the hymn, is natural, however abrupt.
The course of thought is plain. There are four strophes of six verses
each,--of which the first (vv. 1-6) magnifies God's omniscience;
the second (vv. 7-12), His omnipresence; the third (vv. 13-18), His
creative act, as the ground of the preceding attributes; and the
fourth (vv. 19-24) recoils from men who rebel against such a God,
and joyfully submits to the searching of His omniscient eye, and the
guidance of His ever-present hand.
The psalmist is so thoroughly possessed by the thought of his
personal relation to God that his meditation spontaneously takes the
form of address to Him. That form adds much to the impressiveness,
but is no rhetorical or poetic artifice. Rather, it is the shape in
which such intense consciousness of God cannot but utter itself.
How cold and abstract the awestruck sentences become, if we
substitute "He" for "Thou," and "men" for "I" and "me"! The first
overwhelming thought of God's relation to the individual soul is
that He completely knows the whole man. "Omniscience" is a pompous
word, which leaves us unaffected by either awe or conscience. But
the psalmist's God was a God who came into close touch with him, and
the psalmist's religion translated the powerless generality of an
attribute referring to the Divine relation to the universe into a
continually exercised power having reference to himself. He utters
his reverent consciousness of it in ver. 1 in a single clause, and
expands that verse in the succeeding ones. "Thou hast searched me"
describes a process of minute investigation; "and known [me]," its
result in complete knowledge.
That knowledge is then followed out in various directions, and
recognised as embracing the whole man in all his modes of action
and repose, in all his inner and outward life. Vv. 2 and 3 are
substantially parallel. "Down-sitting" and "up-rising" correspond to
"walking" and "lying down," and both antitheses express the contrast
between action and rest. "My thought" in ver. 2 corresponds to "my
ways" in ver. 3,--the former referring to the inner life of thought,
purpose, and will; the latter to the outward activities which carry
these into effect. Ver. 3 is a climax to ver. 2, in so far as it
ascribes a yet closer and more accurate knowledge to God. "Thou
siftest" or _winnowest_ gives a picturesque metaphor for careful
and judicial scrutiny which discerns wheat from chaff. "Thou art
familiar" implies intimate and habitual knowledge. But thought and
action are not the whole man. The power of speech, which the Psalter
always treats as solemn and a special object of Divine approval or
condemnation, must also be taken into account. Ver. 4 brings it, too,
under God's cognisance. The meaning may either be that "There is no
word on my tongue [which] Thou dost not know altogether"; or, "The
word is not yet on my tongue, [but] lo! Thou knowest," etc. "Before
it has shaped itself on the tongue, [much less been launched from
it], thou knowest all its secret history" (Kay).
The thought that God knows him through and through blends in the
singer's mind with the other, that God surrounds him on every side.
Ver. 5 thus anticipates the thought of the next strophe, but presents
it rather as the basis of God's knowledge, and as limiting man's
freedom. But the psalmist does not feel that he is imprisoned, or
that the hand laid on him is heavy. Rather, he rejoices in the
defence of an encompassing God, who shuts off evil from him, as well
as shuts him in from self-willed and self-determined action; and
he is glad to be held by a hand so gentle as well as strong. "Thou
God seest me" may either be a dread or a blessed thought. It may
paralyse or stimulate. It should be the ally of conscience, and,
while it stirs to all noble deeds, should also emancipate from all
slavish fear. An exclamation of reverent wonder and confession of the
limitation of human comprehension closes the strophe.
Why should the thought that God is ever with the psalmist be put in
the shape of vivid pictures of the impossibility of escape from Him?
It is the sense of sin which leads men to hide from God, like Adam
among the trees of the garden. The psalmist does not desire thus to
flee, but he supposes the case, which would be only too common if
men realised God's knowledge of all their ways. He imagines himself
reaching the extremities of the universe in vain flight, and stunned
by finding God there. The utmost possible height is coupled with the
utmost possible depth. Heaven and Sheol equally fail to give refuge
from that moveless Face, which confronts the fugitive in both, and
fills them as it fills all the intervening dim distances. The dawn
flushes the east, and swiftly passes on roseate wings to the farthest
bounds of the Mediterranean, which, to the psalmist, represented the
extreme west, a land of mystery. In both places and in all the broad
lands between, the fugitive would find himself in the grasp of the
same hand (compare ver. 5).
Darkness is the friend of fugitives from men; but is transparent to
God. In ver. 11 the language is somewhat obscure. The word rendered
above "cover" is doubtful, as the Hebrew text reads "bruise," which
is quite unsuitable here. Probably there has been textual error,
and the slight correction which yields the above sense is to be
adopted, as by many moderns. The second clause of the verse carries
on the supposition of the first, and is not to be regarded, as in the
A.V., as stating the result of the supposition, or, in grammatical
language, the apodosis. That begins with ver. 12, and is marked
there, as in ver. 10, by "even."
The third strophe (vv. 13-18) grounds the psalmist's relation to
God on God's creative act. The mysteries of conception and birth
naturally struck the imagination of non-scientific man, and are to
the psalmist the direct result of Divine power. He touches them with
poetic delicacy and devout awe, casting a veil of metaphor over the
mystery, and losing sight of human parents in the clear vision of
the Divine Creator. There is room for his thought of the origin of
the individual life, behind modern knowledge of embryology. In ver.
13 the word rendered in the A.V. "possessed" is better understood in
this context as meaning "formed," and that rendered there "covered"
(as in Psalm cxl. 7) here means to _plait_ or _weave together_, and
picturesquely describes the interlacing bones and sinews, as in
Job x. 11. But description passes into adoration in ver. 14. Its
language is somewhat obscure. The verb rendered "wondrously made"
probably means here "selected" or "distinguished," and represents man
as the _chef d'œuvre_ of the Divine Artificer. The psalmist cannot
contemplate his own frame, God's workmanship, without breaking into
thanks, nor without being touched with awe. Every man carries in his
own body reasons enough for reverent gratitude.
The word for "bones" in ver. 15 is a collective noun, and might be
rendered "bony framework." The mysterious receptacle in which the
unborn body takes shape and grows is delicately described as "secret,"
and likened to the hidden region of the underworld, where are the
dead. The point of comparison is the mystery enwrapping both. The
same comparison occurs in Job's pathetic words, "Naked came I out of
my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither." It is doubtful
whether the word rendered above "wrought like embroidery" refers
to a pattern wrought by weaving or by needlework. In any case, it
describes "the variegated colour of the individual members, especially
of the viscera" (Delitzsch). The mysteries of antenatal being are
still pursued in ver. 16, which is extremely obscure. It is, however,
plain that _a_ sets forth the Divine knowledge of man in his first
rudiments of corporeity. "My shapeless mass" is one word, meaning
anything rolled up in a bundle or ball. But in _b_ it is doubtful what
is referred to in "they all." Strictly, the word should point back to
something previously mentioned; and hence the A.V. and R.V. suppose
that the "shapeless mass" is thought of as resolved into its component
parts, and insert "my members"; but it is better to recognise a slight
irregularity here, and to refer the word to the "days" immediately
spoken of, which existed in the Divine foreknowledge long before they
had real objective existence in the actual world. The last clause of
the verse is capable of two different meanings, according as the Hebrew
text or margin is followed. This is one of a number of cases in which
there is a doubt whether we should read "not" or "to him" (or "it").
The Hebrew words having these meanings are each of two letters, the
initial one being the same in both, and both words having the same
sound. Confusion might easily therefore arise, and as a matter of
fact there are numerous cases in which the text has the one and the
margin the other of these two words. Here, if we adhere to the text,
we read the negative, and then the force of the clause is to declare
emphatically that the "days" were written in God's book, and in a real
sense "fashioned," when as yet they had not been recorded in earth's
calendars. If, on the other hand, the marginal reading is preferred, a
striking meaning is obtained: "And for it [_i.e._, for the birth of the
shapeless mass] there was one among them [predestined in God's book]."
In vv. 17, 18, the poet gathers together and crowns all his
previous contemplations by the consideration that this God, knowing
him altogether, ever near him, and Former of his being, has great
"thoughts" or purposes affecting him individually. That assurance makes
omniscience and omnipresence joys, and not terrors. The root meaning
of the word rendered "precious" is _weighty_. The singer would weigh
God's thoughts towards him, and finds that they weigh down his scales.
He would number them, and finds that they pass his enumeration. It is
the same truth of the transcendent greatness and graciousness of God's
purposes as is conveyed in Isaiah's "As the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are . . . My thoughts than your thoughts." "I awake, and
am still with Thee,"--this is an artless expression of the psalmist's
blessedness in realising God's continual nearness. He awakes from
sleep, and is conscious of glad wonder to find that, like a tender
mother by her slumbering child, God has been watching over him, and
that all the blessed communion of past days abides as before.
The fiery hatred of evil and evil men which burns in the last strophe
offends many and startles more. But while the vehement prayer that
"Thou wouldest slay the wicked" is not in a Christian tone, the
recoil from those who could raise themselves against such a God is
the necessary result of the psalmist's delight in Him. Attraction and
repulsion are equal and contrary. The measure of our cleaving to that
which is good, and to Him who is good, settles the measure of our
abhorrence of that which is evil. The abrupt passing from petition
in ver. 19_a_ to command in _b_ has been smoothed away by a slight
alteration which reads, "And that men of blood would depart from me";
but the variation in tense is more forcible, and corresponds with the
speaker's strong emotion. He cannot bear companionship with rebels
against God. His indignation has no taint of personal feeling, but is
pure zeal for God's honour.
Ver. 20 presents difficulties. The word rendered in the A.V. and
R.V. (text) "speak against Thee" is peculiarly spelt if this is its
meaning, and its construction is anomalous. Probably, therefore, the
rendering should be as above. That meaning does not require a change of
consonants, but only of vowel points. The difficulty of the last clause
lies mainly in the word translated in the A.V. _adversaries_ and in
the R.V. "_enemies_." That meaning is questionable; and if the word is
the nominative to the verb in the clause, the construction is awkward,
since the preceding "who" would naturally extend its influence to this
clause. Textual emendation has been resorted to; the simplest form of
which is to read "against Thee" for "Thine adversaries," a change of
one letter. Another form of emendation, which is adopted by Cheyne and
Graetz, substitutes "Thy name," and reads the whole, "And pronounce Thy
name for falsehoods." Delitzsch adheres to the reading "adversaries,"
and by a harsh ellipsis makes the whole to run, "Who pronounce [Thy
name] deceitfully--Thine adversaries."
The vindication of the psalmist's indignation lies in vv. 21, 22.
That soul must glow with fervent love to God which feels wrong done
to His majesty with as keen a pain as if it were itself struck. What
God says to those who love Him, they in their degree say to God: "He
that toucheth Thee toucheth the apple of mine eye." True, hate is not
the Christian requital of hate, whether that is directed against God
or God's servant. But recoil there must be, if there is any vigour of
devotion; only, pity and love must mingle with it, and the evil of
hatred be overcome by their good.
Very beautifully does the lowly prayer for searching and guidance
follow the psalmist's burst of fire. It is easier to glow with
indignation against evil-doers than to keep oneself from doing evil.
Many secret sins may hide under a cloak of zeal for the Lord. So the
psalmist prays that God would search him, not because he fancies that
there is no lurking sin to be burned by the light of God's eye, like
vermin that nestle and multiply under stones and shrivel when the
sunbeams strike them, but because he dreads that there is, and would
fain have it cast out. The psalm began with declaring that Jehovah
had searched and known the singer, and it ends with asking for that
searching knowledge.
It makes much difference, not indeed in the reality or completeness
of God's knowledge of us, but in the good we derive therefrom, whether
we welcome and submit to it, or try to close our trembling hearts, that
do not wish to be cleansed of their perilous stuff, from that loving
and purging gaze. God will cleanse the evil which He sees, if we are
willing that He should see it. Thoughts of the inner life and "ways" of
the outer are equally to be submitted to Him. There are two "ways" in
which men can walk. The one is a "way of grief or pain," because that
is its terminus. All sin is a blunder. And the inclination to such ways
is "in me," as every man who has dealt honestly with himself knows.
The other is "a way everlasting," a way which leads to permanent good,
which continues uninterrupted through the vicissitudes of life, and
even (though that was not in the psalmist's mind) through the darkness
of death, and with ever closer approximation to its goal in God,
through the cycles of eternity. And that way is not "in me," but I must
be led into and in it by the God who knows me altogether and is ever
with me, to keep my feet in the way of life, if I will hold the guiding
hand which He lays upon me.