Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 139:18
[If] I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
18. moe ] For this archaism cp. Psa 69:4.
when I awake &c.] His last thoughts as he falls asleep are of God; and when he awakes, he finds himself still in His Presence, still occupied in contemplating the mystery of His Being. Cp. Psa 63:6. The Targum, “I awake in the world to come, and I am still with Thee”; and Symm. “I shall awake, and I shall be for ever with Thee,” interpret the words of the resurrection, but this cannot be their original meaning.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
If I should count them – If I could count them.
They are more in number than the sand – Numberless as the sand on the sea-shore.
When I awake, I am still with thee – When I am lost in deep and profound meditation on this subject, and am aroused again to consciousness, I find the same thing still true. The fact of my being forgetful, or lost in profound meditation, has made no difference with thee. Thou art still the same; and the same unceasing care, the same thoughtfulness, still exists in regard to me. Or, the meaning may be, sleeping or waking with me, it is still the same in regard to thee. Thine eyes never close. When mine are closed in sleep, thou art round about me; when I awake from that unconscious state, I find the same thing existing still. I have been lost in forgetfulness of thee in my slumbers; but thou hast not forgotten me. There has been no change – no slumbering – with thee.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 139:18
When I awake, I am still with Thee.
A Christian awakening with God
I. His disposition.
1. It is the care and endeavour of a good man when he awakes to be still with God.
(1) The time.
(a) When not asleep, and so hindered by the necessities of nature. A godly man is careful to be with God in every performance and in every condition, both in regard to–
(i.) Habitual inclination. He is always with God in disposition and affection; and–
(ii.) Actual application. He is careful still to repair to God, and to draw near to Him, whensoever he can.
(b) As soon as I awake.
2. In what respects a Christian, when he is awake, may be said to be with God.
(1) By meditation.
(a) Our thoughts are precious things, being the immediate issue of our souls, and are not to be lightly bestowed by us, especially our first, thoughts. And on whom can we better bestow them than on Him that helps us to them, and without whom we are not sufficient of ourselves so much as to think (2Co 3:5)?
(b) This is to be understood especially of such thoughts as are settled and deliberate and composed such thoughts as a man sets himself to with intention, and suffers to abide in him; these are for the most part suitable and agreeable to the frame of his heart. Now, because a godly man has his heart full of heaven, and God, and goodness, and the graces of the Spirit, therefore are such things as these very often and early in his thoughts.
(2) By communion. Look at friends when they meet in a morning, they have their mutual greeting between them–a loving and friendly salute one of another: even so is it with its due proportions betwixt God and the soul, the soul speaking to Him, and He returning upon it by way of reciprocation.
(a) Confession of sin.
(b) Petition and supplication.
(c) Praise and acknowledgment.
(3) By action and the businesses which are done by us; when we awake to righteousness and sin net.
3. The ground and equity of it.
(1) Our waking thoughts are our first thoughts, and the first of everything is of right Gods.
(2) Our waking thoughts are freshest thoughts; that is, the nimblest and quickest, and most active, and fullest of life. As God deserves the first, so He deserves the best.
(3) Our waking thoughts are our quietest, and freest from commotion: that is the fittest time and season for converse with God, wherein we have least distraction and perplexities and troubles from the world.
(4) Our waking thoughts are our purest and freest from pollution: these things are the fittest for God, which are most like to Himself.
II. His privilege.
1. It secures from dangers (Psa 26:1; Psa 3:5; Psa 4:8; Psa 91:5; Psa 23:4).
2. It quickens to duty; keeps the heart in a holy frame and temper all the day after.
3. It prevents from sin and temptation–at least the prevalencies of it.
III. How we may attain to this blessed condition.
1. Walk with God in the day. The duties of religion are linked together, and come off more easily in the conjunctive performance of each other. Thus reading and hearing, and meditation and communion of saints, conscionably and religiously performed, do so much the better dispose to more immediate communion with God; and the actions of the day have their impressions and reflections upon the night.
2. Lie down with God in the evening. That which we think of last we shall be ready to think of first; and as we conclude the foregoing day, so we are likely to begin the following. Therefore it should be our care, as much as may be, to have God and the things of God in our thoughts when we set ourselves to rest. This is the happiness of a Christian that is careful to lie down with God, that he finds his work still as he left it, and is in the same disposition when he rises as he was at night when he laid to rest. As a man that winds up his watch over night, he finds it going the next morning; so is it also as I may say with a Christian that winds up his heart. This is a good observation to be remembered, especially in the evening before the Sabbath.
3. Observe God in the morning. A man that would be with God when he wakes must observe how God is with him. We shall find sometimes that God Himself doth awaken us, and does desire communion with us (Isa 50:4). (T. Horton, D. D.)
Morning thoughts
To an earnestly devout mind there is no hour in She day to compare with the morning hour. Evening calms the mind when the heat and the tumult of the day are past. Not without good reason did that ancient figure meditate in the fields at eventide. But the morning hour largely determines what he shall meditate upon as he walks those grassy slopes. Let me show you how, by a godly man, that morning hour may be used to do at least something towards flinging into the day a light sweeter and pleasanter than its own.
I. It may be so used as to impart, in some sort at least, a spiritual tone to the entire day. Busy men are wont to complain, In crowded street and busy mart the mind cannot get itself fixed on higher things. Much, however, can be done, and in this way. When that light–so sweet, so pleasant for the eyes to behold–looks in upon us, and the tasks and duties of the day begin to marshal themselves before us, let the mind be imbued with the Christian temper–let it be pitched, so to speak, in a Christian key; and though God through the day may not be in all our thoughts, He will not be far from every one of them.
II. A day begun in this fashion acquires a certain practical steadiness. You have noticed, I am sure, how a day entered upon without thought, without prayer, has invariably turned out a very confused and unsatisfactory thing. There are more battles to fight than those which are won and lost on fields of blood; and the bravest, steadiest soldiers are not the men who have leaped from their beds and rushed into action. They are the men whose heads have been cleared and cooled, and whose mental and spiritual nerves have been braced by meditation and prayer.
III. This kind of prayerful forethought gives a certain desirable speciality to the day. We cannot, it is true, make every day a feast-day, but we can redeem our days from a spiritless sameness. Is my work monotonous? (and whose work is always teeming with freshness of interest?) let me redeem it from being anything like drudgery by baking it up every day as a new trust. Is it uncongenial? (and whose work is always to his taste?) let me place it day by day on the highest grounds. Oh, how often would many of us turn from the incumbent disagreeable, if we did not carry it to a loftier tribunal than any our personal feelings can furnish. (J. Thew.)
Morning meditation
Accustom yourself to a serious meditation every morning. Fresh airing our souls in heaven will engender in us a purer spirit and nobler thoughts. A morning seasoning will secure us for all the day. Though other necessary thoughts about our calling will and must come in, yet, when we have despatched them, let us attend to our morning theme as our chief companion. As a man that is going with another about some considerable business,–suppose go Westminster,–though he meets with several friends on the way, and salutes some, and with others with whom he has some affairs he spends some little time, yet he quickly returns to his companion, and both together go to their intended stage. Do thus in the present case. Our minds are active and will be doing something, though to little purpose; and if they be not fixed upon some noble object, they will, like madmen and fools, be mightily pleased in playing with straws. The thoughts of God were the first visitors David had in the morning. God and his heart met together as soon as he was awake, and kept company all the day after. (S. Charnock.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. If I should count them] I should be glad to enumerate so many interesting particulars: but they are beyond calculation.
When I awake] Thou art my Governor and Protector night and day.
I am still with thee.] All my steps in life are ordered by thee: I cannot go out of thy presence; I am ever under the influence of thy Spirit.
The subject, from the 14th verse to the 16th Ps 139:14-16 inclusive, might have been much more particularly illustrated, but we are taught, by the peculiar delicacy of expression in the Sacred Writings, to avoid, as in this case, the entering too minutely into anatomical details. I would, however, make an additional observation on the subject in the 15th and 16th verses. Ps 139:15-16 I have already remarked the elegant allusion to embroidery, in the word rukkamti, in the astonishing texture of the human body; all of which is said to be done in secret, bassether, in the secret place, viz., the womb of the mother, which, in the conclusion of the verse, is by a delicate choice of expression termed the lower parts of the earth.
The embryo state, golem, has a more forcible meaning than our word substance amounts to. galam signifies to roll or wrap up together; and expresses the state of the fetus before the constituent members were developed. The best system of modern philosophy allows that ino semine masculino all the members of the future animal are contained; and that these become slowly developed or unfolded, in the case of fowls, by incubation; and in the case of the more perfect animals, by gestation in the maternal matrix. It is no wonder that, in considering these, the psalmist should cry out, How precious, or extraordinary, are thy thoughts! how great is the sum – heads or outlines, of them! The particulars are, indeed, beyond comprehension; even the heads – the general contents, of thy works; while I endeavour to form any tolerable notion of them, prevail over me – they confound my understanding, and are vastly too multitudinous for my comprehension.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
To wit, by my thoughts and meditations. Thy wonderful counsels and works on my behalf come constantly into my mind, not only in the day time, but even in the night season, which is commonly devoted to rest and sleep; whensoever I awake, either in the night or in the morning. These are my last thoughts when I lie down, and my first when I rise.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand,…., That is, if I should attempt to do it, it would be as vain and fruitless as to attempt to count the sands upon the seashore, which are innumerable; Ps 11:5. So Pindar says s, that sand flies number, that is, is not to be numbered; though the Pythian oracle boastingly said t, I know the number of the sand, and the measures of the sea; to which Lucan u may have respect when he says, measure is not wanting to the ocean, nor number to the sand; hence geometricians affect to know them; so Archytas the mathematician, skilled in geometry and arithmetic, is described and derided by Horace w as the measurer of the earth and sea, and of the sand without number; and Archimedes wrote a book called x, of the number of the sand, still extant y, in which he proves that it is not infinite, but that if even the whole world was sand it might be numbered; but the thoughts of God are infinite;
when I wake, I am still with thee; after I have been reckoning them up all the day, and then fall asleep at night to refresh nature after such fatiguing researches; when I awake in the morning and go to it again, I am just where I was, and have got no further knowledge of God and his thoughts, and have as many to count as at first setting out, and far from coming to the end of them: or else the sense is, as I was under thine eye and care even in the womb, before I was born, so I have been ever since, and always am, whether sleeping or waking; I lay myself down and sleep in safety, and rise in the morning refreshed and healthful, and still continue the care of thy providence: it would be well if we always awaked with God in our thoughts, sensible of his favours, thankful for them, and enjoying his gracious presence; as it will be the happiness of the saints, that, when they shall awake in the resurrection morn, they shall be with God, and for ever enjoy him.
s Olymp. Ode 2. in fine. t Apud Herodot. Clio, sive l. 1. c. 47. u Pharsal. l. 5. v. 182. w Carmin. l. 1. Ode. 28. v. 1, 2. x Vid. Turnebi Advers. l. 26. c. 1. y Fabrit. Biblioth. Gr. l. 3. c. 22. s. 8.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(18) If I should . . .The original is more expressive:
Let me count themmore than the sand they are many:
I have awakedand still with thee.
With the countless mysteries of creation and providence the poet is so occupied, that they are his first waking thought; or, perhaps, as the Hebrew suggests, his dreams are continued into his early thoughts.
Is not the vision He? tho He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last; and do we not live in dreams?
TENNYSON: Higher Pantheism.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 139:18 [If] I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Ver. 18. If I should count them, &c. ] q.d. They are infinite and immmerable. Archimedes, that great mathematician, bragged, that he could number all the sands in the habitable and inhabitable world, but no man ever believed him. See 1Sa 13:5 2Sa 17:11 Psa 78:27 .
When I awake, I am still with thee
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
more in number . . . sand. Figure of speech Paroemia. App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
they are more: Psa 40:12
when I awake: Psa 139:3, Psa 3:5, Psa 16:8-11, Psa 17:15, Psa 63:6, Psa 63:7, Isa 26:19, Dan 12:2, 1Th 5:10
Reciprocal: Gen 24:63 – to meditate Job 5:9 – without number Psa 40:5 – thoughts Psa 71:15 – I know Psa 73:23 – Nevertheless Psa 104:34 – meditation Psa 106:2 – utter Psa 119:55 – night Psa 119:148 – eyes Psa 147:5 – his understanding is infinite Hab 1:9 – they shall gather
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
139:18 [If] I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, {n} I am still with thee.
(n) I continually see new opportunity to meditate in your wisdom, and to praise you.