Psalms 139 - Introduction

The consciousness of the intimate personal relation between God and man which is characteristic of the whole Psalter reaches its climax here. The omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of Jehovah are no cold philosophical abstractions for the Psalmist. He realises most vividly that Jehovah is One Who knows all his thoughts and actions, One from Whose universal Presence he cannot escape, One Who has fashioned his frame and ordered his life. With profound reverence he meditates on these truths in an address to God, recognising their mystery and awfulness, and seeking not to escape from God but to yield himself more fully to His control and guidance.

The Psalm falls into four divisions.

i. Jehovah knows every thought and action (Psalms 139:1-6).

ii. To escape from His Presence is impossible (Psalms 139:7-12).

iii. Nor is this surprising, for it is He Who has moulded the Psalmist's frame and ordered his life, with unsearchable depth of wisdom (Psalms 139:13-18).

iv. How can this All-seeing, Almighty God tolerate evil men? With such the Psalmist will have no fellowship. May God search his heart, and purge it from every evil way (Psalms 139:19-24)!

The title A Psalm of Davidcannot indicate its authorship. The language of the Psalm is not pure Hebrew, but is marked by a strong Aramaic colouring. It resembles the language of the Book of Job, and in several respects the thought of the Psalm is also akin to that book. The problem of God's tolerance of the wicked perplexed the Psalmist (Psalms 139:19 ff.), as it perplexed Job Vv13-16 resemble Job 10:9 ff. Elôah, the common word for God in Job, but found only four times in the Psalter, occurs in Psalms 139:19; and the word for -slay" in the same verse is used in Heb. elsewhere only in Job, though it is common in Aramaic.

The addition of Zachariah, in Cod. A of the LXX, with the further gloss in the margin, in the dispersion(both readings are found in the Zürich Psalter, T) may preserve a tradition of the exilic or post-exilic origin of the Psalm. But when or where it was written must remain unknown. If the provenanceof the Book of Job could be determined, we might be on the track of the origin of this Psalm.