Translation: ESV
O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
God's knowing is not mere knowledge but personal care that deeply searches each individual.
▸Psalm 139 is the psalm that expresses God's omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence most personally and most beautifully.
Psalm 139 is the psalm that expresses God's omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence most personally and most beautifully. 'You have searched me and known me' is not mere knowledge but deep care and intimate knowing.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
God knows completely all our actions and even our inner thoughts.
▸Sitting and rising represent all daily actions, and knowing thoughts expresses that God knows even the deepest interior.
Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?
God's presence cannot be escaped anywhere, and this inescapability becomes the basis not of fear but of comfort.
▸This is the most dramatic expression of God's omnipresence.
If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
God is present at every extreme of the universe, and the believer cannot be cut off from his presence anywhere.
▸The heights of heaven and the depths of Sheol—the topmost and lowest points of the universe—God is present in both.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
God directly forms each person in the womb, and this is the basis of the sacredness and dignity of every human life.
▸This is a confession that God directly made each person in the womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
Each individual's very existence is God's fearfully and wonderfully made creation, and this is the basis of self-dignity.
▸Thanksgiving is given for being fearfully and wonderfully made.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
God is the God of providence who knows and plans our days even before our existence.
▸The fact that before one's form was fashioned—before birth—God had already seen and recorded the days in his book is a confession of faith in foreknowledge and predestination.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
Not fearing God's searching but actually requesting it is the expression of honest faith and spiritual maturity.
▸In the final section of Psalm 139, after confessing God's omniscience, David prays for God to search him.
And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
The result of seeking God's searching is the removal of what is grievous and being led in the everlasting way.
▸This is the final prayer of Psalm 139.