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There is not any one place of scripture, I think, which more fully informs us of the perfect and exact knowledge of Almighty God, as to all persons and things, than this before us.
Observe, 1. The object, all and everything, our persons, our actions, the manner of our actions, the design and end of our actions: he knows what we have been and done, and what we will be and do.
Observe, 2. The full manifestation and clear representation of all persons and things unto God.
1. All things are here said to be naked, unclothed, their dress and paint taken off: These words are and allusion to bodies, which being stripped and unclothed, all see what they are; there may be many deformities, blemishes, yea, ulcers, upon a body undiscerned, while it is clothed and covered; but when naked, every scar appears, and nothing is hid; all things are naked in his sight; that is, he as plainly discerns what they are, as we discern what a body is that stands naked before us. The knowledge which God has of persons and things, is a clear and distinct knowledge.
2. All things are here said to be open as well as naked, unto God; a metaphor taken, says St. Chrysostom, from the sacrificed beasts, which being excoriated, their skins plucked off, they were cut down from the neck to the rump, so that all the inwards of the best lay bare, and every part might be clearly seen; it is one thing to see a sheep alive, with its skin and fleece on, and another thing to see it naked and flayed; but a farther thing to see it opened and emboweled, with all its intestines and inwards exposed to the eye.
Others think there is in the original word an allusion to anatomists, who open and dissect human bodies, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the bowels, all exactly appear whether sound or decayed: Such a kind of anatomy doth God make upon man's heart; his piercing eye sees and discerns what is flesh, and what is spirit in us, what is faith, what is fancy, what is grace in reality, and what in appearance only.
Doubtless the phrase doth signify a most intimate, full, and thorough knowledge of all persons, and all things, which is found in that God with whom we have to do, and to whom we must give and account for all that we have done.