Psalm 139:3

David speaks straight to God: “O LORD.” The name is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name God made known to Israel, which Strong’s explains as “the self-Existent or Eternal.” The God who knows David so thoroughly is the God who bound himself to his people, and David speaks to him as one person to another.

“Thou hast searched me” uses châqar, to search, examine carefully, explore or find out. Strong’s gives its root idea as to penetrate, and so to examine intimately. The verb looks back on something already done, so David is describing a searching God has completed. Then “and known me” uses yâdaʻ, the ordinary Hebrew verb to know, which reaches from knowing a fact to knowing by experience, recognising, caring for and being closely acquainted with someone. Scripture uses it even for the bond between husband and wife. The two lines say one thing twice, and the second deepens the first. God has looked into every part of David, and he knows David himself.

God already knows all things, and Scripture speaks of his searching in our own terms so that we can grasp how thorough his knowledge is. Hebrews says, “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). God told Jeremiah that he knew him before he formed him in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5), and John assures troubled believers that God is greater than our heart and knows all things (1 John 3:20).

This first verse states the theme of the whole of Psalm 139. David goes on to say that there is nowhere he could go from God’s presence (Psalm 139:7–12), praises God for forming him in the womb (Psalm 139:13–18), and ends by asking God to do once more what this verse says he has done: “Search me, O God, and know my heart” (Psalm 139:23–24).

“Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising” uses yâshab, to sit down, which can also mean to stay or dwell, and qûwm, to rise or stand up. Sitting down and getting up are opposites, and naming the pair takes in everything between them, a way of speaking called a merism. God knows David at rest and at work, when he settles and when he sets out, from waking to sleeping. “Thou knowest” is yâdaʻ again, the same verb as “known me” in verse 1.

“Thou understandest my thought afar off” moves from what David does to what he thinks. “Understandest” is bîyn, to discern or perceive. “Thought” is rêaʻ, a purpose or intention, the thinking that comes before action. “Afar off”, râchôwq, can be taken two ways. God knows a thought from a great distance, with no need to come near or to hear it spoken, and he knows it long beforehand, before it has fully formed in David’s own mind. Either way, the hidden places of the mind lie open to him.

The LORD says the same through Jeremiah: “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jeremiah 17:10). David told Solomon that the LORD searches all hearts and understands every thought (1 Chronicles 28:9). Jesus carries this into the smallest detail of our lives, saying that the very hairs of our head are numbered (Matthew 10:29–30).

“For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.” The word for “word” is millâh, from mâlal, to speak. It means a word, and taken together a discourse or a matter. “Tongue” is lâshôwn, the tongue itself, which also stands for speech and language. The sense is that before a word is even on David’s tongue, the LORD knows it, and knows it “altogether”, completely. “Lo”, or “behold”, calls attention to something astonishing, and David names God again, “O LORD”, as he did at the start. “Thou knowest” is yâdaʻ once more.

People ask whether this means God knows our thoughts as well as our words. He knows them just as fully, as verse 2 has already said: “thou understandest my thought afar off.” The psalm moves from thoughts to deeds to words, and a word is a thought on its way out, so God knows it at its source.

This makes the verse a great comfort in prayer. Anxieties we cannot put into words, prayers we never finish and groans we never voice are all understood by him. It also makes us careful with our speech, since every word is known before it is said. The God who knows the heart this closely is the God who promised to write his law upon it (Jeremiah 31:33).

“Thou hast beset me behind and before” uses tsûwr, to cramp or confine, to bind up, besiege, fortify or enclose. The picture is of a man shut in on every side. “Behind”, ʼâchôwr, is the back or hinder part, and “before”, qedem, is the front. Back and front together stand for every side, a second merism. Both words also have a sense of time. ʼâchôwr can mean “hereafter”, time to come, and qedem can mean what is of old. The same qedem names God in Moses’ blessing: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). God surrounds David on every side, and the words themselves reach from what is ancient to what is still to come.

“And laid thine hand upon me” uses kaph, the hollow of the hand or the palm, which figuratively means power. In Israel a hand laid on someone meant several things. Jacob laid his hands on Joseph’s sons to bless them (Genesis 48:14), and Moses laid his hand on Joshua to commission him (Numbers 27:18). Hands were laid on for healing and as a mark of ownership and authority. God’s hand on David is his own direct touch, carrying both his care and his rule. He promises to uphold his people with his hand (Isaiah 41:10), and Psalm 91 sings of him as refuge and fortress for all who trust him.

“Such knowledge” is daʻath, from yâdaʻ. It means knowledge, including skill and discernment, and “such” points back to everything in verses 1–5. “Too wonderful” is pilʼîy, remarkable, wonderful, secret, beyond what we can account for. “High” is sâgab, lofty, and so out of reach and safe from attack. “I cannot attain unto it” turns on yâkôl, to be able or to prevail. David is unable to reach this knowledge or master it. The stanza that began with God searching David ends with David confessing that he can never search out God’s knowledge.

His confession is the humility of worship. Job came to the same place: “therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not” (Job 42:3). The LORD says through Isaiah, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9). Paul breaks into the same praise: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33–34). Since God’s understanding is perfect, we can trust his plans when we cannot see the whole of them.

God’s knowledge of what we will do is a perfect awareness of our choices, and Scripture holds it together with our real freedom and responsibility. A historian who knows every detail of the past does not cause those events by knowing them, and God’s foreknowledge of our choices leaves us accountable for them in the same way. Peter says that Jesus was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23), and in the same sentence he holds his hearers responsible. Moses sets life and death before Israel and calls them to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). Paul tells believers to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who works in them to will and to do (Philippians 2:12–13). Scripture affirms both God’s sovereignty and our responsibility without fully explaining how they fit, and we hold both as true.

The knowledge David marvels at is seen in Jesus. He knew the thoughts of the scribes (Matthew 9:4), perceived the hypocrisy behind a question (Mark 12:15), saw Nathanael under the fig tree before they met (John 1:48), told the Samaritan woman her own history (John 4:17–19), and foretold Peter’s denial before it happened (Matthew 26:34). John says that “he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man” (John 2:24–25).

His knowing leads to saving. He says, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14), using the Greek ginōskō for the same close knowing as verse 1. He is our High Priest, touched with the feeling of our weaknesses and tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). The hand laid on David in verse 5 has its answer in his promise that no one can pluck his sheep out of his hand or his Father’s hand (John 10:28–29).

The knowledge that was too high for David has come near in Christ. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The Son knows the Father and makes him known (Matthew 11:27, John 1:18), and in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Through faith in him we receive the wisdom that comes from above (James 3:17), the Spirit guides us into all truth (John 16:13), and eternal life itself is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3).

These verses give us the comfort of being known all the way through. Our rest and our going out, our thoughts before we form them and our words before we say them are all open to the LORD. When others misread us, or we cannot put our own trouble into words, he understands it altogether. The same truth makes for honesty, since there is nowhere to hide from him and nothing gained by pretending.

David’s answer to all this is wonder, and at the close of the psalm he asks God to go on searching him. The God who knows us best is the God who has laid his hand on us, and in Christ the one who knows every sin we commit is the one who laid down his life for us.