Psalm 139: Known, Held, and Led

Core Theme: For when your thoughts are tangled and anxious, and you need to know you are completely known and never alone

(Related Theme: This psalm also offers guidance, as David asks God to search his heart and lead him in the way everlasting. See “Carrying this forward” below.)

Background

David wrote Psalm 139 as a personal meditation, and Scripture doesn’t tell us the specific occasion that prompted it. What the psalm gives us instead is something more lasting: a close look at what it means to be known by God. It moves through four movements. David reflects on God’s knowledge of him (vv.1–6), God’s presence with him (vv.7–12), God’s care in making him (vv.13–18), and finally his own prayer to be searched and led (vv.23–24). Between the last two sits a short and difficult passage about the wicked (vv.19–22), which is addressed in its own section at the end of this post.

Psalm 139 (KJV)

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1. O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
2. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
3. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
4. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
5. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
7. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
9. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
10. Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
11. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
12. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
13. For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
14. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
17. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
18. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
19. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
20. For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
21. Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
22. I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
23. Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

The heart of it

An anxious mind often carries a quiet fear underneath the racing thoughts: that no one fully understands what is going on inside, and that if they did, it would be too much. Psalm 139 answers that fear at its root. David says God has “searched” him and “known” him (v.1), and that nothing within him is a surprise to God. Even the thoughts that seem too scattered to explain are understood “afar off” (v.2), before David has put a single word to them.

What makes this comforting rather than unsettling is what David does with that knowledge. He doesn’t try to hide. He finds that there is nowhere to hide and that this is good news. God’s presence goes with him into the heights, the depths, and the far reaches of the sea (vv.7–10). It goes with him into the dark as well: “the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day” (v.12). What feels like total darkness to us is not dark to God. The same truth stands behind the words of John’s Gospel: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5).

Two images of God’s hands hold the psalm together. In verse 5 God has “laid thine hand upon” David, and in verse 10 His right hand “shall hold me.” Then in verse 13 David says, “thou hast possessed my reins.” The “reins” were understood as the seat of a person’s deepest feelings and inner life, and “possessed” speaks of ownership and careful formation. David belongs to God, all the way down. The Lord Jesus gives the same assurance to those who are His own: “…neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). To be fully known and fully held at once is the settled answer to a restless mind.

Walking through it

• Verse 2: “…thou understandest my thought afar off.” Before your thought has taken shape, God has already grasped it. You never have to find the right words for what is happening in your mind before you bring it to Him.
• Verses 5 and 13: “Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me” and “For thou hast possessed my reins.” Read together, they say the same thing from two directions. God’s hand is on you from the outside, surrounding you behind and before, and His claim reaches the innermost part of you, where anxiety lives. You are in His hands, and you are His.
• Verses 10–12: “Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” Notice the two actions together: lead and hold. And when David imagines the darkness covering him, he finds “even the night shall be light about me” (v.11). There is no place, and no season, so dark that God’s presence has to be summoned into it. He is already there.
• Verses 23–24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” The word translated “thoughts” in verse 23 can carry the sense of anxious, troubling thoughts. David invites God into the very place where the restlessness lives and asks Him to lead from there.

Carrying this forward

If your thoughts are running in every direction tonight, this psalm invites you to stop trying to sort them out on your own. You are already completely known. Nothing in your mind is hidden from God or too tangled for Him, and nowhere in your day, or in the middle of the night, is outside His reach. David even found rest in the idea at the edge of sleep: “when I awake, I am still with thee” (v.18). Whatever the morning brings, you wake up in the same presence you fell asleep in.

And when you aren’t sure which way to turn, or a decision feels too large to see clearly, the closing prayer gives you words to use. David doesn’t ask for a map. He asks God to search him and to lead him, and that is a prayer you can bring to Him in the same spirit: honest about what’s going on inside you, and willing to be led “in the way everlasting.”

A Personal Note

This is one of my favorite psalms, and it is one I know by heart. It has helped me through seasons of anxiety, and more than that, it keeps reminding me of something I never want to lose hold of: I am His. When I stumble, He is there with me. There is no place I can go to escape Him, and I have stopped wanting to. Even when I sin, verse 17 meets me where I am: “How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!” I am not outside His thoughts or His love, and the sum of them is beyond my counting. His hold on me doesn’t loosen when I fail, and the Scripture says so plainly: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1). That is the comfort I find in this psalm, and it is why I keep returning to it. I hope you find as much comfort in this psalm as I do.