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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 139:13 - 139:13
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The fact that man is manifest to God even to the very bottom of his nature, and in every place, is now confirmed from the origin of man. The development of the child in the womb was looked upon by the Israelitish Chokma as one of the greatest mysteries, Ecc 11:5; and here the poet praises this coming into being as a marvellous work of the omniscient and omnipresent omnipotence of God. קָנָה here signifies condere; and סָכַךְ not: to cover, protect, as in Psa 140:8; Job 40:22, prop. to cover with network, to hedge in, but: to plait, interweave, viz., with bones, sinews, and veins, like שׂכֵךְ in Job 10:11. The reins are made specially prominent in order to mark the, the seat of the tenderest, most secret emotions, as the work of Him who trieth the heart and the reins. The προσευχή becomes in Psa 139:14 the εὐχαριστία: I give thanks unto Thee that I have wonderfully come into being under fearful circumstances, i.e., circumstances exciting a shudder, viz., of astonishment (נֹורָאֹות as in Psa 65:6). נִפְלָה (= נִפְלָא) is the passive to הִפְלָה, Psa 4:4; Psa 17:7. Hitzig regards נִפְלֵיתָה (Thou hast shown Thyself wonderful), after the lxx, Syriac, Vulgate, and Jerome, as the only correct reading; but the thought which is thereby gained comes indeed to be expressed in the following line, Psa 139:14, which sinks down into tautology in connection with this reading. `otsem (collectively equivalent to עֲצָמִים, Ecc 11:5) is the bones, the skeleton, and, starting from that idea, more generally the state of being as a sum-total of elements of being. אֲשֶׁר, without being necessarily a conjunction (Ew. §333, a), attaches itself to the suffix of עָצְמִי. רֻקַּם, “to be worked in different colours, or also embroidered,” of the system of veins ramifying the body, and of the variegated colouring of its individual members, more particularly of the inward parts; perhaps, however, more generally with a retrospective conception of the colours of the outline following the undeveloped beginning, and of the forming of the members and of the organism in general.
(Note: In the Talmud the egg of a bird or of a reptile is called מְרֻקֶּמֶת, when the outlines of the developed embryo are visible in it; and likewise the mole (mola), when traces of human; organization can be discerned in it.)
The mother's womb is here called not merely סֵתֶר (cf. Aeschylus' Eumenides, 665: ἐν σκοτοισι νηδύος τεθραμμένη, and the designation of the place where the foetus is formed as “a threefold darkness' in the Koran, Sur. xxxix. 8), the ē of which is retained here in pause (vid., Böttcher, Lehrbuch, §298), but by a bolder appellation תַּחְתִּיֹּות אָרֶץ, the lowest parts of the earth, i.e., the interior of the earth (vid., on Psa 63:10) as being the secret laboratory of the earthly origin, with the same retrospective reference to the first formation of the human body out of the dust of the earth, as when Job says, Job 1:21 : “naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither” - שָׁמָּה, viz., εἰς τὴν γῆν τὴν μητέρα πάντων, Sir. 40:1. The interior of Hades is also called בֶּטֶן שְׁאֹול in Jon 2:2, Sir. 51:5. According to the view of Scripture the mode of Adam's creation is repeated in the formation of every man, Job 33:6, cf. Job 33:4. The earth was the mother's womb of Adam, and the mother's womb out of which the child of Adam comes forth is the earth out of which it is taken.
Psa 139:16
The embryo folded up in the shape of an egg is here called גֹּלֶם, from גָּלַם, to roll or wrap together (cf. glomus, a ball), in the Talmud said of any kind of unshapen mass (lxx ἀκατέργαστον, Symmachus ἀμόρφωτον) and raw material, e.g., of the wood or metal that is to be formed into a vessel (Chullin 25a, to which Saadia has already referred).
(Note: Epiphanius, Haer, xxx. §31, says the Hebrew γολμη signifies the peeled grains of spelt or wheat before they are mixed up and backed, the still raw (only bruised) flour-grains - a signification that can now no longer be supported by examples.)
As to the rest, compare similar retrospective glances into the embryonic state in Job 10:8-12, 2 Macc. 7:22f. (Psychology, S. 209ff., tr. pp. 247f.). On the words in libro tuo Bellarmine makes the following correct observation: quia habes apud te exemplaria sive ideas omnium, quomodo pictor vel sculptor scit ex informi materia quid futurum sit, quia videt exemplar. The signification of the future יִכָּתֵבוּ is regulated by רָאוּ, and becomes, as relating to the synchronous past, scribebantur. The days יֻצָּרוּ, which were already formed, are the subject. It is usually rendered: “the days which had first to be formed.” If יֻצָּרוּ could be equivalent to יְיֻצָּרוּ, it would be to be preferred; but this rejection of the praeform. fut. is only allowed in the fut. Piel of the verbs Pe Jod, and that after a Waw convertens, e.g., וַיַּבֵּשׁ = וַיְיַבֵּשׁ, Nah 1:4 (cf. Caspari on Oba 1:11).
(Note: But outside the Old Testament it also occurs in the Pual, though as a wrong use of the word; vide my Anekdota (1841), S. 372f.)
Accordingly, assuming the original character of the לֹא in a negative signification, it is to be rendered: The days which were (already) formed, and there was not one among them, i.e., when none among them had as yet become a reality. The suffix of כֻּלָּם points to the succeeding יָמִים, to which יֻצָּרוּ is appended as an attributive clause; וְלֹא אֶחָד בָּהֶם is subordinated to this יֻצָּרוּ: cum non or nondum (Job 22:16) unus inter eos = unus eorum (Exo 14:28) esset. But the expression (instead of וְעֹוד לֹא הָיָה or טֶרֶם יִהְיֶה) remains doubtful, and it becomes a question whether the Kerî ולו (vid., on Psa 100:3), which stands side by side with the Chethîb ולא (which the lxx, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targum, Syriac, Jerome, and Saadia follow), is not to be preferred. This ולו, referred to גלמי, gives the acceptable meaning: and for it (viz., its birth) one among them (these days), without our needing to make any change in the proposed exposition down to יצרו. We decide in favour of this, because this ולו אחד בהם does not, as ולא אחד בהם, make one feel to miss any הָיָה, and because the וְלִי which begins Psa 139:17 connects itself to it by way of continuation. The accentuation has failed to discern the reference of כלם to the following ימים, inasmuch as it places Olewejored against יכתבו. Hupfeld follows this accentuation, referring כלם back to גלמי as a coil of days of one's life; and Hitzig does the same, referring it to the embryos. But the precedence of the relative pronoun occurs in other instances also,
(Note: The Hebrew poet, says Gesenius (Lehrgebäude, S. 739f.), sometimes uses the pronoun before the thing to which it referred has even been spoken of. This phenomenon belongs to the Hebrew style generally, vid., my Anekdota (1841), S. 382.)
and is devoid of all harshness, especially in connection with כֻּלָּם, which directly signifies altogether (e.g., Isa 43:14).
It is the confession of the omniscience that is united with the omnipotence of God, which the poet here gives utterance to with reference to himself, just as Jahve says with reference to Jeremiah, Jer 1:5. Among the days which were preformed in the idea of God (cf. on יצרו, Isa 22:11; Isa 37:26) there was also one, says the poet, for the embryonic beginning of my life. The divine knowledge embraces the beginning, development, and completion of all things (Psychology, S. 37ff., tr. pp. 46ff.). The knowledge of the thoughts of God which are written in the book of creation and revelation is the poet's cherished possession, and to ponder over them is his favourite pursuit: they are precious to him, יָֽקְרוּ (after Psa 36:8), not: difficult of comprehension (schwerbegreiflich, Maurer, Olshausen), after Dan 2:11, which would surely have been expressed by עָֽמְקוּ (Psa 92:6), more readily: very weighty (schwergewichtig, Hitzig), but better according to the prevailing Hebrew usage: highly valued (schwergewerthet), cara.
(Note: It should be noted that the radical idea of the verb, viz., being heavy (German schwer), is retained in all these renderings. - Tr.)
“Their sums” are powerful, prodigious (Psa 40:6), and cannot be brought to a summa summarum. If he desires to count them (fut. hypothet. as in Psa 91:7; Job 20:24), they prove themselves to be more than the sand with its grains, that is to say, innumerable. He falls asleep over the pondering upon them, wearied out; and when he wakes up, he is still with God, i.e., still ever absorbed in the contemplation of the Unsearchable One, which even the sleep of fatigue could not entirely interrupt. Ewald explains it somewhat differently: if I am lost in the stream of thoughts and images, and recover myself from this state of reverie, yet I am still ever with Thee, without coming to an end. But it could only perhaps be interpreted thus if it were הַֽעִירֹותִי or הִתְעֹורַרְתִּי. Hofmann's interpretation is altogether different: I will count them, the more numerous than the sand, when I awake and am continually with Thee, viz., in the other world, after the awaking from the sleep of death. This is at once impossible, because הקיצתי cannot here, according to its position, be a perf. hypotheticum. Also in connection with this interpretation עֹוד would be an inappropriate expression for “continually,” since the word only has the sense of the continual duration of an action or a state already existing; here of one that has not even been closed and broken off by sleep. He has not done; waking and dreaming and waking up, he is carried away by that endless, and yet also endlessly attractive, pursuit, the most fitting occupation of one who is awake, and the sweetest (cf. Jer 31:26) of one who is asleep and dreaming.