Psalm 139: Pt. 4, vss. 13-18

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
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.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious to me 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.

In verses 13-18, David hasn’t neatly intellectualized what he knows about God, but has enacted his theology in a forthright and frighteningly pragmatic way—listen to what he says in verse 14, ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ Whereas in other psalms, David points to the birds of the air or the creatures in the sea, to God’s historic fidelity to Israel, to God’s goodness in dwelling among Israel as reasons to praise God, here David recognizes that he need go no further than his own hand and foot to have compelling reason to praise God. This connection is not incidental following on the previous 13 verses. We are given a beautiful description of the meticulous care that God took in creating David. All of those other things David could shut his eyes to, he could ignore them, he could refuse to consider them as he looked for reasons to praise God—or reasons not to praise God, as it were. When we get enough anxiety in our lives, such things aren’t readily apparent to us—the ways God’s been faithful, how he drew us to himself in the first place, the great gifts he’s given us, the amazing and generous spouse we have by our side. While we really are capable of shutting our eyes and our hearts to all these things, whenever you find yourself and wherever you find yourself, the point of commonality is you. And David couldn’t shut his eyes or ignore that.

When we think there is nothing good around us, when we are blinded by our own sin or our own bitterness or the insults of those around us, we cannot avoid our very selves— the wonder of our bodies, the sensation of being our inmost being. The sequence of thought so far is that: “God sees the psalmist at all times, even in the dark, and he sees into the depths of his being, into his conscience—and that is no surprise since God was responsible for its creation.” We are known and that is both unavoidable and praiseworthy; when we can think of no other reason to praise God, his care in creating us is more than sufficient. Indeed God took the care to write all the days ordained for David before one of them came to be—he knows David’s life backwards and forwards, and not just because he’s read ahead but because he wrote it himself. For these reasons, God’s thoughts seem wonderful to David, worth savoring and cherishing. And this is how David knows that God is with him and that he is with God.

Verses 1-18 is a song of trust (a motif of a petition psalm)—David has drawn us into his own existential sense of God’s relationship to him—knowing him, near to him, and caring for him; ultimately trustworthy and good.