Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 139:6
[Such] knowledge [is] too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot [attain] unto it.
6. A concluding exclamation of reverent awe. Such infinite knowledge baffles human thought to comprehend it. Cp. Rom 11:33.
(so) exalted (that) I cannot attain unto it ] “The word used implies ‘high so as to be inaccessible’; it is used, for instance, of an impregnable city, Deu 2:36 ” (Driver). It is also used of God, Isa 2:11; Isa 2:17; Isa 12:4.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me – literally, Wonderful knowledge away from me, or, more than I can comprehend. It is beyond my reach; it surpasses all my powers to comprehend it.
It is high, I cannot attain unto it – It is so exalted that I cannot grasp it; I cannot understand how it can be.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 139:6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
Gods all-knowledge
If we had to take our trial for our lives before the tribunal of an earthly judge, there are probably three questions which we should ask ourselves with no little anxiety: Has the judge himself the power, or does he represent some one who has the power, to enforce the sentence which he may pronounce? Is the judge a man of that integrity of character which is fearless when interpreting the plain sense of the law that is to be administered, and equitable when some indistinctness in that law obliges the interpreter to fall back on his own sense of what is probably right? Can the judge command the means of knowing enough of those facts upon which his decision must be based to judge righteous judgment, to have himself and to inspire others with the assurance that innocence is acquitted and that guilt is punished? When we turn our thoughts upwards to the Judge of all men, we know how a serious believer in God must answer such questions as these.
I. But, as we look more closely at the subject, certain features of the knowledge which is possessed by the Divine mind stand out before us more distinctly. They show how that knowledge differs from knowledge as it exists in ourselves, and they enable us to understand how the knowledge which belongs to God, as God, is knowledge of an extent and of a kind which makes it certain that when seated on the throne of judgment the Holy Judge of all the earth does right.
1. And first of all, then, so far as we know, all, or nearly all, of our knowledge is acquired, and most of it is acquired at very considerable cost of time and labour. Now, nothing corresponding to this can hold good of the mind of God. God does not acquire His knowledge; He ever possessed it. Acquisition implies ignorance to begin with; it implies a limited prospect which is gradually enlarged by effort; it implies dependence upon intermediate sources of knowledge, upon books, teachers, the testimony of others, evidence, experiment. All this is inadmissible in conceiving of the Divine Mind which never could have been ignorant, never dependent upon anything or any person external to itself for obtaining information. Man may be very–nay, utterly ignorant–not, indeed, without grave loss, but certainly without forfeiting his manhood. In man, knowledge, however important, is yet an accident of his life: it is conceivably separated from it. In God, on the other hand, knowledge is not a separable accident, a dispensable attribute of His existence. As God, He cannot but know, and know on an infinite scale. In God, as St. Augustine finely says, to know is the same thing as to exist. There can be in Him no progress from a lower to a higher plane of knowledge, still less from ignorance to knowledge. In Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge have ever been exactly what they are. Now, consider how this bears on the duties of a judge. A human judge, whatever his knowledge of the statute book, whatever his experience of proceedings in the courts, is dependent upon the evidence which is brought before him, when charging the jury or when forming his own judgment. If the evidence is confused or imperfect, if it is perjured or untrustworthy, still it is all he has to go upon; he must do the best he can with it; he has no means of arriving at a bound at the truth of the facts independently of that which is deposed to before him. Alas! however excellent his intentions, however absolute his integrity, he cannot escape a liability–the human liability–to make mistakes. In the Divine Judge this liability does not exist, because His knowledge of facts, not being acquired by weighing evidence, is ever and immediately present to His mind. He sees everything–men, events, characters–at a glance, and as they are.
2. And as human knowledge is acquired, so it is liable to decompose in our minds. It is less easily acquired than it is forgotten. Here, again, we must see that nothing corresponding to this process, so familiar in the experience of the human mind, is even imaginable in the mind of God. It knows no variableness, neither shadow of turning. All that is, all that might have been and is not, all that might yet be, whether it is to be or is not to be, is eternally present to it, and it could not forfeit its hold upon any part of this, to us, inconceivably vast field of knowledge without ceasing to be itself. And here, again, the Divine Judge must differ from any human judge. No human judge can prudently trust his memory even to retain what is brought before him in a case that lasts but a few hours; he can only trust his notes. Memory, he knows, is treacherous; it gives way just when we need it most; it refuses to recall a date, a name, a figure, a fact, unimportant generally, but of critical importance then and now Its impotence is, so we think, as capricious as are its good services. In the Awful Mind above and around us nothing like this is possible, because it does not ever, as we do, look back upon any fact as upon something past; it is always in contact with all facts, whether, from our point of view, they be past or present or future, as eternally present to it.
3. And, once more, human knowledge is very limited. We know in part. As the generations of men who devote themselves to the work of marshalling and increasing the stock of human knowledge succeed each other, each generation is largely occupied in showing how defective was the knowledge of those who immediately preceded it, while it knows that in turn it, too, will be exposed to a like criticism on the part of its successors. So far are we men from possessing the field of universal knowledge that a man never entirely masters any single subject. In the Divine Mind, on the contrary, we cannot conceive partial knowledge of any subject whatever. God knows all, because He is everywhere. The Omnipresent cannot but be also omniscient. What need is there to say that the knowledge of the human judge is, I will not say partial, but very limited indeed? Were it otherwise, how superfluous would be the machinery which now justice adopts in order to achieve its ends. How different with the Divine Judge! He can gain nothing from any external source of knowledge, and nothing can intercept or divert His all-surveying, all-penetrating, all-comprehending intelligence.
II. Of this knowledge possessed by God there are some features which, from their bearing on life and conduct, deserve special attention.
1. Thus God knows not only what is known to the world, or to our relations about each one of us; He knows that which each of us only knows about himself. His eye surveys our secret thoughts and words and ways. He has sometimes revealed this knowledge through the mouth of an inspired servant, as when Elisha discovered his double-dealing with Naaman to the astonished Gehazi, or when St. Peter proclaimed their crime and its punishment to the terrified Ananias and Sapphira.
2. He knows, too, the exact measure of our individual responsibility for the corporate acts of the societies to which we belong–the Church, the nation, the parish, the family.
3. And, once more, He knows what each one of us would be in other circumstances than those with which He has surrounded us. He knows this because He sees our inmost dispositions, and sees us as we are. Yes, in thinking of the judgment we have to think not only of the power, not only of the goodness of the Judge, but of His limitless knowledge, that awful attribute of a knowledge which searches us out in the depths of our being, which plays upon us, around us, within us, every moment of our lives with a penetrating scrutiny that nothing can elude; that knowledge before which the night is as the day, and the future as the present, and the possible as the actual, and the secret things of darkness as the most ordinary facts of daylight; that knowledge which nothing can impair, nothing can disturb, nothing can exaggerate or discolour; the calm, majestic, resistless outlook of the Eternal Mind will become real to us–real to you and to me–as never before in our experience. There are two resolutions which the thought of that meeting should surely suggest. The first resolution, if we can, to know something really about ourselves before we die, to dwell no longer, if hitherto we have so dwelt, on the surface of life, to see ourselves with eyes not of our friends, not of our own self-love, but, so far as may be, as the holy angels see us, as He sees us who is the Lord of angels, our Maker and our Judge. Each day some few minutes should surely be spent in the regular and fruitful practice of self-examination. And the second resolution is to fly for refuge to that one Friend who can make a true knowledge of self bearable to each of us. We can dare to be true not only because our Redeemer and our God is Himself the Faithful and the True, but because He is the All-merciful, because, if we so will, He has searched us out and known us even here, that at the last great day He may make us trophies not of His awful justice, but of His redeeming grace. (Canon Liddon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 6. Such knowledge is too wonderful] I think, with Kennicott, that pelaiah daath should be read peli haddaath, “THIS knowledge,” mimmenni, “is beyond or above me.” This change is made by taking the he from the end of pelaiah, which is really no word, and joining it with daath; which, by giving it an article, makes it demonstrative, haddaath, “THIS knowledge.” This kind of knowledge, God’s knowledge, that takes in all things, and their reasons, essences, tendencies, and issues, is far beyond me.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
I am so far from equalling thy knowledge, that I cannot apprehend it, in what manner thou dost so perfectly know all things, even such as are most secret, and have yet no being, and seem to depend upon many casualties and uncertainties.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
[Such] knowledge [is] too wonderful for me,…. Meaning either the knowledge of himself, such as God had of him, which was vastly superior to what he had of himself; and especially the knowledge of other persons and things, whether visible or invisible, in heaven, earth, or hell; things past, present, and to come; or else the manner in which God knew all this was amazing to him, and quite impenetrable by him; that he did know him, his thoughts, his words and actions, and so those of all others, was easy of belief; but how he should know all this was past his conception, and struck him with the profoundest admiration;
it is high; sublime, out of his reach, beyond his comprehension;
I cannot [attain] unto it; neither to such knowledge, nor to comprehend what it is in God; and how he should have it, and in what manner he exercises it. Kimchi, Jarchi, and Aben Ezra, connect the words with the following, as if the matter of his wonder and astonishment was the omnipresence of God, or where he should find a place to flee from him.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
6. Thy knowledge is wonderful above me Two meanings may be attached to ממני : mimmenni. We may read upon me, or, in relation to me, and understand David to mean that God’s knowledge is seen to be wonderful in forming such a creature as man, who, to use an old saying’, may be called a little world in himself; nor can we think without astonishment of the consummate artifice apparent in the structure of the human body, and of the excellent endowments with which the human soul is invested. But the context demands another interpretation; and we are to suppose that David, prosecuting the same idea upon which he had already insisted, exclaims against the folly of measuring God’s knowledge by our own, when it rises prodigiously above us. Many when they hear God spoken of conceive of him as like unto themselves, and such presumption is most condemnable. Very commonly they will not allow his knowledge to be greater than what comes up to their own apprehensions of things. David, on the contrary, confesses it to be beyond his comprehension, virtually declaring that words could not express this truth of the absoluteness with which all things stand patent to the eye of God, this being a knowledge having’ neither bound nor measure, so that he could only contemplate the extent of it with conscious imbecility.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(6) Such . . .Gods omniscience is for man at once transcendent, unattainable, impossible. Possibly the article has dropped away, and we should read this knowledge. LXX. and Vulg. have thy knowledge.
For the thought comp. Psa. 139:17-18, and Rom. 11:33.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
6. Too wonderful for me Above the reach of the human faculties. Same as “ it is high, I cannot attain to it,” in the next line. Thus far the psalmist describes omniscience. He next proceeds to connect omnipresence, omnipotence, and wisdom.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 139:6. Such knowledge is too wonderful, &c. Grotius supposes the meaning to be, “Thy knowledge, or rather, thy omniscience, is so great, that it is impossible to escape or fly from it.” Mr. Mann thinks that the 6th verse should be rendered thus: Wonderful is thy knowledge, and elevated above me; I cannot prevail against it: From hence, says he, the Psalmist pursues the thought of God’s omnipresence; Whither shall I go, &c.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 139:6 [Such] knowledge [is] too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot [attain] unto it.
Ver. 6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ] I can hardly conceive of this thine omniscience and omnipresence, but am ready to measure thee by myself, and according to mine own model. And, indeed, for a creature to believe the infinite attributes of God, he is never able to do it thoroughly without supernatural grace.
It is high, I cannot attain unto it
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
knowledge: Psa 40:5, Psa 13:1, Job 11:7-9, Job 26:14, Job 42:3, Pro 30:2-4, Rom 11:33
Reciprocal: Job 11:8 – deeper Job 37:19 – we Psa 71:19 – Thy righteousness Psa 119:129 – testimonies Psa 131:1 – high for me Psa 145:3 – and his greatness is unsearchable Pro 30:18 – too Ecc 7:24 – General Isa 40:28 – no searching Zec 4:5 – No 1Co 13:9 – General Eph 3:18 – able
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 139:6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, &c. It is such a knowledge as I cannot comprehend, much less describe. I cannot conceive, or even form any idea in what manner thou dost so perfectly know all things, especially things which have yet no being, and seem to depend on many casualties and uncertainties. Dr. Hammond renders the verse, Such knowledge is admirable, above me: it is high; I cannot deal with it. But the sense of the original of the last clause, , seems better expressed in our translation. The mind of the psalmist, when he uttered these words, was evidently impressed with such a veneration and awe of the infinite Jehovah, the fountain and support of universal life and being; and he found his faculties so swallowed up, and, as it were, lost in meditating on so deep and immense a subject; that mans reason, in its utmost pride and glory, and with its most boasted improvements and acquisitions of knowledge, seemed now so debased, so weak, so narrow, and, in comparison with infinity, so despicable, that he could proceed no further without expressing his admiration at such a boundless scope of intelligence as he could neither explain nor comprehend: see Fosters Discourses, vol. Psa 1:4 to. p. 76.