# Psalm 139: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, and Nowhere Left to Hide > Psalm 139 is best known for one line about being fearfully and wonderfully made, and read whole it is a stranger poem than that suggests. Its subject is being unable to get away. God knows every thought before it is spoken; verse 5 says he hems the writer in behind and in front, which is a besieging word. Then five escape routes are tried — heaven, the grave, the sunrise, the far sea, the dark — and none of them works. The reason turns out to be verse 13: you cannot get outside someone who made you from the inside. And the psalm ends by asking that God search the writer himself, immediately after he has declared that he hates his enemies. _Scripture text is not reproduced in this file: the translations BibleHearth serves are licensed from their publishers and carry a required copyright notice that a stripped copy would lose. Every reference below links to the verse on the site, where the text and its notice are served together._ ## Psalm 139 outline, verse by verse ### [Psalm 139:1-6](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/1) — Known completely, down to the unspoken sentence Sitting down, standing up, walking, lying down, and words before they reach the tongue. Verse 5 puts it physically: hemmed in behind and before, with a hand laid on him. Verse 6 admits the whole thing is more than he can take in. ### [Psalm 139:7-12](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/7) — Five places to run, and none of them work Up to the heavens, down to Sheol, east on the wings of the dawn, west to the farthest sea, and finally into the dark. Each is answered the same way: you are there. The last one gets the best line — darkness is as light to you. ### [Psalm 139:13-16](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/13) — The reason he cannot get outside God Because God was already inside. Formed his inmost being, knitted him together unseen, saw the unfinished body, and had his days written down before any of them happened. The being-known of verses 1 to 12 turns out to be authorship. ### [Psalm 139:17-18](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/17) — What he makes of it Not fear but appreciation: God's thoughts towards him are precious and uncountable, more than the sand. And then the quietest line in the psalm — when I wake up, I am still with you. ### [Psalm 139:19-22](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/19) — The turn almost nobody quotes "O God, that you would slay the wicked." Bloodthirsty men, people who misuse God's name, and then a declaration: I hate them with perfect hatred. This is the same psalm, four verses from the end. ### [Psalm 139:23-24](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/23) — The searchlight turned around Having asked for his enemies to be dealt with, he asks God to search him instead — know my heart, test me, see if there is anything offensive in me, lead me in the way everlasting. The last word is about his own correction. ## The main ideas in Psalm 139 ### Being fully known is the psalm's problem before it is its comfort The first twelve verses are not soothing on their own terms. Verse 5's "you hem me in" translates a word used for laying siege to a city; verse 6 says the knowledge is too much for him. Then he tries five ways out — the sky, the grave, the far east, the far west, the dark — which is not what someone does when they are enjoying being known. The psalm is honest that total exposure feels like being cornered before it feels like being loved, and it does not hurry past that. What resolves it is not a change of feeling but a piece of information in verse 13. ### Fearfully and wonderfully made is the middle of an argument Verse 14 is usually met alone, where it works as a statement about human worth. In place it is doing a job. The writer has just spent six verses failing to escape God, and verses 13 to 16 explain why the attempt was hopeless: God was present at his assembly, worked on his inmost parts, watched the unformed body, and wrote his days down in advance. So "fearfully and wonderfully made" is the reason there is nowhere to run. It is a claim about God's involvement rather than a compliment about the writer, which makes it sturdier — it does not depend on how good he happens to feel about himself. ### It ends in hatred, and then in self-examination Verses 19 to 22 are shocking and they are deliberately placed. A psalm about being intimately known asks God to kill people and declares perfect hatred for them. Then, with no transition, verse 23 asks God to search the writer's own heart and see whether there is anything offensive in it. That sequence is the most instructive thing in the psalm. He has just aimed the searchlight at his enemies, and his final move is to turn it on himself — not withdrawing the prayer, but submitting the person who prayed it for inspection. It is what an honest person does after saying something like verse 22 out loud. ### The comfort is that you cannot be lost, not that you are safe Nothing in this psalm promises protection. There are enemies in it at the end and they are still there when it finishes. What it promises is that no location and no condition puts you outside God's reach or notice — including the grave, including the dark, including sleep, since verse 18 says he wakes up still with God. For anyone who has felt unseen or unaccounted for, that is a different and often more useful comfort than a promise about circumstances. It works in places a promise of safety cannot follow you into. ## Words in Psalm 139, explained simply - **Sheol** — The Old Testament's word for the place of the dead — not hell as later Christians came to describe it, but the shadowy realm everyone went to. Verse 8 names it as the lowest place imaginable and says God is there too. - **hem me in** — The Hebrew word is used for surrounding a city under siege. It is not a gentle picture, and translations that soften it to something like "surround me" lose the pressure the writer clearly feels in verses 5 and 6. - **fearfully** — In verse 14 it does not mean nervously — it means in a way that produces awe. The older English sense is closer to "awesomely". The verse is saying the way he was made is startling, not that he was made anxiously. - **the depths of the earth** — A poetic way of describing somewhere hidden and unreachable, used in verse 15 as a parallel for the womb. It is imagery for a place no human eye can see into, not a claim about where the writer was formed. - **your book** — A record kept by God, an image used several times in the Bible. Verse 16 says the writer's days were written in it before any of them happened, which is a statement about God's foreknowledge rather than a description of an actual volume. - **perfect hatred** — "Complete" or "whole" hatred — the word means without reservation rather than morally flawless. Verse 22 is saying his hatred holds nothing back, which is exactly what makes the next verse's request to be examined so pointed. - **the way everlasting** — The ancient or eternal way, contrasted with the "offensive way" in the same verse. It is the last phrase in the psalm and it asks for direction rather than reassurance. ## Key verses in Psalm 139 ### [Psalm 139:7-8](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/7) The escape attempt that sets up the whole poem. Heaven and the grave are the two furthest points a person could name, and both are answered with the same three words. ### [Psalm 139:13](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/13) The turn on which the psalm's argument rests. God's knowledge is not surveillance from outside but the knowledge of someone who did the assembling. ### [Psalm 139:14](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/14) The most quoted line in the psalm, and worth reading with verse 13 in front of it and verse 15 after. It is the middle of an explanation, not a stand-alone affirmation. ### [Psalm 139:16](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/16) Days written down before any of them arrived. One of the Bible's strongest statements about God knowing a life in advance, and one Christians read in more than one way. ### [Psalm 139:23-24](https://biblehearth.online/verse/psalms/139/23) The ending, and the reason the psalm holds together. The man who has just declared perfect hatred asks to be searched himself, which is the only decent response to having said it. ## What Psalm 139 is often made to say, and does not Verses 13 to 16 are the most quoted passage in Scripture in arguments about abortion, and it is worth being straight about what they do and do not settle. What the psalm says is clear enough: God was involved before birth, the unformed body was not hidden from him, and the writer's days were counted before any of them began. Christians on more than one side of the question take that seriously, and those who oppose abortion are not misreading it when they say the passage treats the unborn as known and intended by God. What the passage is not is a legal or philosophical definition. It is a prayer of astonishment, written in poetry, whose purpose in the psalm is to explain why the writer cannot escape God — not to fix a moment when personhood begins. Quoting it as though it closed the argument asks a poem to do the work of an argument, and quoting it as though it said nothing at all ignores what it plainly does say. The other misuse is smaller: verse 14 is not a verse about self-esteem, and treating it as one detaches it from the reason it is there. ## Common questions about Psalm 139 ### What does "fearfully and wonderfully made" mean? "Fearfully" here uses an older sense of the word, meaning in a way that produces awe — not anxiously. So the line means something like "I am made in a way that is startling and wonderful", and the credit is God's, not the writer's. It also has a job in the psalm. He has just tried five times to get away from God and failed, and verses 13 to 16 explain the failure: God was there at his making, working on his inmost parts, watching a body that was not finished yet. The verse is the reason there is nowhere to hide, which is why it does not depend on the reader feeling good about themselves. ### What does "you knit me together in my mother's womb" mean? The Hebrew verb suggests weaving or interlacing, the kind of work that is done carefully and by hand, and the psalm pairs it with God forming his "inmost being" — the internal, unseen parts. Verse 15 doubles the image by saying he was made "in secret" and in "the depths of the earth", both ways of naming a place no human being can look into. Taken together, the claim is that God's involvement with this person started before anybody else knew they existed, and went all the way down rather than being a finishing touch. ### Does Psalm 139 say life begins at conception? It does not use that language, and it is not trying to answer that question — but it says things that bear on it, and Christians disagree about how much weight they carry. What the text asserts is that God formed the writer's inner parts, that his unformed body was already visible to God, and that his days were written down before any of them happened. People who oppose abortion cite that fairly: the passage treats the unborn as known, intended and worked on. Others point out that it is a poem of praise rather than a definition, and that biblical poetry about God's care from the womb also appears in passages about calling and vocation rather than status. The honest summary is that Psalm 139 is real evidence in the discussion and not a settlement of it. ### What does "search me, O God, and know my heart" mean? It is an invitation to be examined, and its placement is everything. The writer has spent the whole psalm describing God's total knowledge of him, mostly as something he could not escape — and then, at the end, having just asked God to kill his enemies and said he hates them completely, he asks for that same searching attention to be turned on himself. So it is not a devotional flourish. It is a man submitting his own anger for inspection. The request has two halves: find anything offensive in me, and then lead me in the right direction. He asks to be corrected, not just examined. ### What does "where can I flee from your presence" mean? It is a question asked by somebody who has thought about it seriously, and the answers are geographical: up to the heavens, down to the place of the dead, east as far as the sunrise, west to the furthest sea, and then into the dark. Each is the extreme limit of a direction, and each gets the same reply — you are there. Notice the tone. This is not a comfortable meditation on God being everywhere; it reads like somebody checking the exits. What changes it from claustrophobia to comfort is verse 10, where the hand that finds him in those places is described as guiding and holding rather than catching. ### Why does Psalm 139:22 say "I hate them with complete hatred"? Because the writer means it, and the psalm does not soften it. Verses 19 to 22 ask God to kill violent men who misuse his name, and the writer aligns himself completely with God's opposition to them — "perfect" here means whole or without reservation rather than morally admirable. Two things are worth holding. Jesus later explicitly tells his followers to love their enemies and pray for people who persecute them, so a Christian cannot simply adopt verse 22 as an instruction. And the psalm itself supplies the corrective: the very next verse asks God to search the man who just said it and show him anything offensive in his own heart. The passage is a record of what a person prayed, and what he did straight afterwards. ### What is the book in which all my days were written? An image, used elsewhere in the Bible, of God keeping a record. Verse 16 says the writer's days were in it before a single one of them arrived, which is a statement about God knowing his life whole rather than about the existence of a physical volume. Christians read the implications differently. Some take it as strong evidence that every event is determined in advance; others read it as God's complete foreknowledge without treating it as a script. The psalm does not adjudicate that, and its own use of the idea is simpler — it is one more reason the writer cannot get outside God's knowledge of him. ### What does "if I make my bed in Sheol you are there" mean? Sheol is the Old Testament's word for the realm of the dead, where everyone was understood to go — not the later Christian picture of hell, and not a place of punishment in most Old Testament usage. Naming it alongside the heavens gives the writer the two furthest points on a vertical line: the highest place and the lowest. The claim is that God's presence has no upper or lower limit. It is also one of the more remarkable statements in the Old Testament, which usually describes Sheol as somewhere cut off from God's presence and praise. This verse says otherwise. ## If this is your first time reading Psalm 139 Read the whole thing, including the part about hating people. It is only twenty-four verses, and the ending changes how the famous bit sounds. The first half is not the warm poem it is usually quoted as. God knows when the writer sits and stands, follows his path, and knows his sentences before he says them. Verse 5 says God hems him in behind and in front, and the Hebrew word there is the one used for putting a city under siege. Verse 6 admits the whole thing is too much for him. And then verses 7 to 12 are a man checking the exits: the sky, the grave, the sunrise, the far ocean, the dark. Every one comes back the same — you are there. That is the setup for the famous verse. "Fearfully and wonderfully made" is not a compliment dropped into the middle of the psalm; it is the answer to why the escape attempt failed. God did not learn about this man from outside. He assembled him. You cannot get away from someone who was present at your making, and verse 16 pushes it further: the days were written down before any of them happened. Then read verses 19 to 22, which almost never get quoted. The same psalm asks God to kill violent men and says, flatly, I hate them with complete hatred. It is jarring, and it is meant to be there. Because of what happens next. With no transition at all, verse 23 says: search me, O God, and know my heart. See if there is any offensive way in me. He has just aimed God's total knowledge at his enemies, and his last act is to point it at himself. That is the shape of the psalm, and it is worth more than the nursery-wall version. It is not about feeling good about how you were made. It is about a man who could not get away from God, worked out why, and then asked to be examined. ## Related topics - [Bible verses about loneliness](https://biblehearth.online/topics/loneliness) - [Bible verses about anxiety](https://biblehearth.online/topics/anxiety) - [Bible verses about trust](https://biblehearth.online/topics/trust) - [Bible verses about prayer](https://biblehearth.online/topics/prayer) - [Bible verses about gratitude](https://biblehearth.online/topics/gratitude) --- Source: https://biblehearth.online/psalms/139 Reviewed: 2026-08-19 Original writing © BibleHearth. Quoted Scripture is licensed from its publisher and is not included here.