O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am awesomely and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you. O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil! Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. (Psalm 139)

Few passages in the Bible speak of God’s closeness to human beings with as much subtlety and force as Psalm 139. “Lord, you have searched me and known me”, say the very first lines. God, the psalm tells us, is not a distant observer but one who looks deeply into individuals, who knows them not partially or one-sidedly but rather in the entirety of their existence, indeed as no one else can.

As the psalm unfolds, the tone becomes more pressing. “Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” The psalmist pictures himself going high and low, and from east to west before hiding finally in darkness in order to elude God, but to no avail. God’s hand now is not only upon him, as earlier (v. 5), but holds him fast (v. 10). The realization seems all at once frightful and reassuring: there is no way to escape from God, but, at the same time, God never abandons individuals, no matter how far they stray from him.

The text then takes a turn inwards. “You created my kidneys,” it says literally in verse 13! In the ever concrete language of the Bible, the kidneys are often associated with decision-making. To distinguish what is right from what is not, human beings must consult deep inside themselves, the term seems to be saying, deeper even than their hearts. The idea is close to what many people today call the conscience. Remarkably, it is here, at the very center of the psalm, where we find the one mention of praise: “I praise you for I am awesomely and wonderfully made!” Could the psalm be suggesting that one of the ways God is close to us is precisely in our desire and in our search for what is good and right and true? We may be tempted at times to flee or hide from this—indeed it is sometimes so challenging that life would seem simpler without it—but we can also be amazed and see it as a gift, thanking God for it.

The final part of the psalm is perhaps the most surprising. All of a sudden the psalmist asks God to do away with evildoers and declares his hatred for them. As shocking as this may be, such an attitude is often considered positively in the Old Testament, for it indicates rejection of evil and, assumedly then, attachment to good. If the Gospel teaching to love one’s enemies makes these verses difficult, if not impossible, to pray as such for followers of Jesus, we can still respect the struggle they testify to. Believing and living in a wounded and often violent world is, after all, our own struggle as well. In the end, however, the psalmist does not linger in his contentions with others but continues his prayer to God. Has his ardor made him suddenly wonder about his own innocence and the way he is going? “Search me and know my heart,” he prays finally to God. For it is God who opens in our life ever again not just one way among others, but the “everlasting way”.

 Can I identify with the struggles of the psalmist? In what way? Can I identify with his praise?

 If God has already examined us and knows us, as it says in the first verse, why ask God to examine and know us once again?