10Even there Your hand will lead me,
         And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

11If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
         And the light around me will be night,”

12Even the darkness is not dark to You,
         And the night is as bright as the day.
         Darkness and light are alike to You.

13For You formed my inward parts;
         You wove me in my mother’s womb.

14I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
         Wonderful are Your works,
         And my soul knows it very well.

15My frame was not hidden from You,
         When I was made in secret,
         And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;

16Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
         And in Your book were all written
         The days that were ordained for me,
         When as yet there was not one of them.

17How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
         How vast is the sum of them!

18If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
         When I awake, I am still with You.

19O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
         Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.

20For they speak against You wickedly,
         And Your enemies take Your name in vain.

21Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD?
         And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?

22I hate them with the utmost hatred;
         They have become my enemies.

23Search me, O God, and know my heart;
         Try me and know my anxious thoughts;

24And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
         And lead me in the everlasting way.

Parallel Verses

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
If I climb upward on the rays of the morning sun or land on the most distant shore of the sea where the sun sets,

King James Bible
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Douay-Rheims Bible
If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea:

Darby Bible Translation
If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

English Revised Version
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Webster's Bible Translation
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

World English Bible
If I take the wings of the dawn, and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Young's Literal Translation
I take the wings of morning, I dwell in the uttermost part of the sea,

Cross References

Psalm 65:8 They who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of Your signs; You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy.

Psalm 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

Psalm 139:10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

Amos 9:3 "Though they hide on the summit of Carmel, I will search them out and take them from there; And though they conceal themselves from My sight on the floor of the sea, From there I will command the serpent and it will bite them.

Jonah 1:3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

Commentary

Matthew Henry's Whole Bible Commentary

Verses 7-16

It is of great use to us to know the certainty of the things wherein we have been instructed, that we may not only believe them, but be able to tell why we believe them, and to give a reason of the hope that is in us. David is sure that God perfectly knows him and all his ways,

I. Because he is always under his eye. If God is omnipresent, he must needs be omniscient; but he is omnipresent; this supposes the infinite and immensity of his being, from which follows the ubiquity of his presence; heaven and earth include the whole creation, and the Creator fills both (Jer. 23:24); he not only knows both, and governs both, but he fills both. Every part of the creation is under God's intuition and influence. David here acknowledges this also with application and sees himself thus open before God.

1. No flight can remove us out of God's presence: "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, from thy presence, that is, from thy spiritual presence, from thyself, who art a Spirit?" God is a Spirit, and therefore it is folly to think that because we cannot see him he cannot see us: Whither shall I flee from thy presence? Not that he desired to go away from God; no, he desired nothing more than to be near him; but he only puts the case, "Suppose I should be so foolish as to think of getting out of thy sight, that I might shake off the awe of thee, suppose I should think of revolting from my obedience to thee, or of disowning a dependence on thee and of shifting for myself, alas! whither can I go?" A heathen could say, Quocunque te flexeris, ibi Deum videbis occurrentem tibi-Whithersoever thou turnest thyself, thou wilt see God meeting thee. Seneca. He specifies the most remote and distant places, and counts upon meeting God in them. (1.) In heaven: "If I ascend thither, as I hope to do shortly, thou art there, and it will be my eternal bliss to be with thee there." Heaven is a vast large place, replenished with an innumerable company, and yet there is no escaping God's eye there, in any corner, or in any crowd. The inhabitants of that world have as necessary a dependence upon God, and lie as open to his strict scrutiny, as the inhabitants of this. (2.) In hell-in Sheol, which may be understood of the depth of the earth, the very centre of it. Should we dig as deep as we can under ground, and think to hide ourselves there, we should be mistaken; God knows that path which the vulture's eye never saw, and to him the earth is all surface. Or it may be understood of the state of the dead. When we are removed out of the sight of all living, yet not out of the sight of the living God; from his eye we cannot hide ourselves in the grave. Or it maybe understood of the place of the damned: If I make my bed in hell (an uncomfortable place to make a bed in, where there is no rest day or night, yet thousands will make their bed for ever in those flames), behold, thou art there, in thy power and justice. God's wrath is the fire which will there burn everlastingly, Rev. 14:10. (3.) In the remotest corners of this world: "If I take the wings of the morning, the rays of the morning-light (called the wings of the sun, Mal. 4:2), than which nothing more swift, and flee upon them to the uttermost parts of the sea, or of the earth (Job 38:12, 13), should I flee to the most distant and obscure islands (the ultima Thule, the Terra incognita), I should find thee there; there shall thy hand lead me, as far as I go, and thy right hand hold me, that I can go no further, that I cannot go out of thy reach." God soon arrested Jonah when he fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

2. No veil can hide us from God's eye, no, not that of the thickest darkness, v. 11, 12. "If I say, Yet the darkness shall cover me, when nothing else will, alas! I find myself deceived; the curtains of the evening will stand me in no more stead than the wings of the morning; even the night shall be light about me. That which often favours the escape of a pursued criminal, and the retreat of a beaten army, will do me no kindness in fleeing from them." When God divided between the light and darkness it was with a reservation of this prerogative, that to himself the darkness and the light should still be both alike. "The darkness darkeneth not from thee, for there is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves." No hypocritical mask or disguise, how specious soever, can save any person or action from appearing in a true light before God. Secret haunts of sin are as open before God as the most open and barefaced villanies.

II. Because he is the work of his hands. He that framed the engine knows all the motions of it. God made us, and therefore no doubt he knows us; he saw us when we were in the forming, and can we be hidden from him now that we are formed? This argument he insists upon (v. 13-16): "Thou hast possessed my reins; thou art Master of my most secret thoughts and intentions, and the innermost recesses of my soul; thou not only knowest, but governest, them, as we do that which we have possession of; and the possession thou hast of my reins is a rightful possession, for thou coveredst me in my mother's womb, that is, thou madest me (Job 10:11), thou madest me in secret. The soul is concealed form all about us. Who knows the things of a man, save the spirit of a man?" 1 Co. 2:11. Hence we read of the hidden man of the heart. But it was God himself that thus covered us, and therefore he can, when he pleases, discover us; when he hid us from all the world he did not intend to hide us from himself. Concerning the formation of man, of each of us,

1. The glory of it is here given to God, entirely to him; for it is he that has made us and not we ourselves. "I will praise thee, the author of my being; my parents were only the instruments of it." It was done, (1.) Under the divine inspection: My substance, when hid in the womb, nay, when it was yet but in fieri-in the forming, an unshapen embryo, was not hidden from thee; thy eyes did see my substance. (2.) By the divine operation. As the eye of God saw us then, so his hand wrought us; we were his work. (3.) According to the divine model: In thy book all my members were written. Eternal wisdom formed the plan, and by that almighty power raised the noble structure.

2. Glorious things are here said concerning it. The generation of man is to be considered with the same pious veneration as his creation at first. Consider it, (1.) As a great marvel, a great miracle we might call it, but that it is done in the ordinary course of nature. We are fearfully and wonderfully made; we may justly be astonished at the admirable contrivance of these living temples, the composition of every part, and the harmony of all together. (2.) As a great mystery, a mystery of nature: My soul knows right well that it is marvellous, but how to describe it for any one else I know not; for I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the womb as in the lowest parts of the earth, so privately, and so far out of sight. (3.) As a great mercy, that all our members in continuance were fashioned, according as they were written in the book of God's wise counsel, when as yet there was none of them; or, as some read it, and none of them was left out. If any of our members had been wanting in God's book, they would have been wanting in our bodies, but, through his goodness, we have all our limbs and sense, the want of any of which might have made us burdens to ourselves. See what reason we have then to praise God for our creation, and to conclude that he who saw our substance when it was unfashioned sees it now that it is fashioned.

Calvin's Commentary

7. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? rind whither shall flee from thy face? 8. If I ascend up into heaters, thou art there; if I lie down in the sepulcher, lo! thou art there. 9. Shall I take the wings of the morning, that I may 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 shall say; at least the darkness shall cover me, and the night shall be light for me; 12. Even the darkness shall not hide from thee, and the night shall be lightened up as day, and darkness as the light.

7. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? I consider that David prosecutes the same idea of its being' impossible that men by any subterfuge should elude the eye of God. By the Spirit of God we are not here, as in several other parts of Scripture, to conceive of his power merely, but his understanding and knowledge. [205] In man the spirit is the seat of intelligence, and so it is here in reference to God, as is plain from the second part of the sentence, where by the face of God is meant his knowledge or inspection. David means in short that he could not change from one place to another without God seeing him, and following him with his eyes as he moved. They misapply the passage who adduce it as a proof of the immensity of God's essence; for though it be an undoubted truth that the glory of the Lord fills heaven and earth, this was not at present in the view of the Psalmist, but the truth that God's eye penetrates heaven and hell, so that, hide in what obscure corner of the world he might, he must be discovered by him. Accordingly he tells us that though he should fly to heaven, or lurk in the lowest abysses, from above or from below all was naked and manifest before God. The wings of the morning, [206] or of Lucifer, is a beautiful metaphor, for when the sun rises on the earth, it transmits its radiance suddenly to all regions of the world, as with the swiftness of flight. The same figure is employed in Malachi 4:2. And the idea is, that though one should fly with the speed of light, he could find no recess where he would be beyond the reach of divine power. For by hand we are to understand power, and the assertion is to the effect that should man attempt to withdraw from the observation of God, it were easy for him to arrest and draw back the fugitive. [207]

11. If I shall say, etc. David represents himself as a man using every possible method to make his escape from a situation of embarrassment. So having acknowledged that it was vain to dream of flight, he bethinks himself of another remedy, and says, If no speed of mine can bear me out of the range of God's vision, yet, on the supposition of light being removed, the darkness might cover me, that I might have a short breath of respite. But this also he declares to be hopeless, as God sees equally well in the deepest darkness as at noon-day. It is a mistake in my opinion to consider, as some have done, that the two clauses of the verse are to be taken separately, and read, If I shall say the darkness will cover me, even the night shall be as light before me -- meaning that darkness would be converted into light, and so though he saw nothing himself, he would stand manifest before the eye of God. David is rather to be considered as in both clauses expressing what he might be supposed to feel desirous of, and intimates that, could he only find any covert or subterfuge, he would avail himself of the license; [208] "if I shall say, at least the darkness will cover me, and the night be as light for me," that is, in the sense in which it is so to the robbers or wild beasts of the forest, who then range at greater liberty. That this is the proper construction of the words we may infer from the particle gm, gam. If any one should think it a very unnecessary observation to say that as respects God there is no difference between light and darkness, it is enough to remind him that all observation proves with what reluctance and extreme difficulty men are brought to come forward openly and unreservedly into God's presence. In words we all grant that God is omniscient; meanwhile what none would ever think of controverting we secretly make no account of whatsoever, in so far as we make no scruple of mocking God, and lack even that reverence of him which we extend to one of our fellow-creatures. We are ashamed to let men know and witness our delinquencies; but we are as indifferent to what God may think of us, as if our sins were covered and veiled from his inspection. This infatuation if not sharply reproved will soon change light, so far as we are concerned, into darkness, and therefore David insists upon the subject at length in order to refute our false apprehensions. Be it our concern to apply the reproofs given, and stir ourselves up by them, when we feel disposed to become secure.

Footnotes:

[205] Some commentators suppose the third person of the Trinity to be here referred to.

[206] Or "of the dawn of the morning." schr, shachar, the word employed, "is the light which is seen in the clouds before the rising of the sun, and it is like as if it; had wings to fly with haste; for in a moment the dawn of the morning is spread over the horizon, from the end of the east to that of the west." -- Mendlessohn's Beor.

[207] Dathe understands thy hand of God's gracious presence to defend the Psalmist; and such may be the meaning of the words. But whether we take them in this sense, or according to Calvin, as expressing man's being under the power of God, in whatever part of the world he may be, they illustrate the divine omniscience, which Calvin regards as the chief design of the inspired writer.

[208] "C'est plustost que David prononcant ee propos selon son propre sentiment, entend que pourveu qu'il puisse estre par quelqne moyen couvert et cache, il aura quelque peu de bon temps," etc. -- Fr.

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