Psalm 139 - ki nara'ot nifleityti (wondrous, set apart)
Robert Alter's translation and commentary of the Psalms is something quite special. Although I can't quite agree with the absense of the "soul" psalmist's approach to God, it's a worthwhile commentary and a new interpretation of the Hebrew. Check it out if you get the chance.
He describes Psalm 139 as "one of the most remarkably introspective psalms in the canonical collection...this poem is essentially a meditation on God's searching knowledge of man's innermost thoughts, on the limitations of human knowledge, and on God's inescapable presence throughout the created world."
Psalm 139 starts "Lord, You searched me and You know." To be before God is to be exposed. I think of my first experiences praying, learning what repentance meant (to turn around), and I felt God's love to be gentle and caring, helping me to remove masks, bearing up my weights of guilt, fear, ignorrance. I hope that there is exposure of my deepest places, the center of my soul and activity, when I am before God. He is a searching Light who sweeps out the dark corners. I hope to be before him more often than not.
Psalm 139 reminds that God is inescapable, as Alter put it. There is no place the psalmist can go that he will not encounter God in some way. He explores the polar ends of the universe: from Heaven to Hell, God is there. "If I take wing with the dawn, if I dwell at the ends of the sea, there, too, Your hand leads me."
Alter points out that "the speaker imagines taking wing with the dawn as it appears in the east, then soaring with the sun on its westard path to the limits of the imagined world." God's awesome presence is everywhere His signature can be found. But His spirit is also anywhere we go. Part of what this psalm is saying is wherever we go, He goes. Especially with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can trust that the His pneuma dwells where we dwell, walks where we walk, lays down where we lay down, loves where we love.
Maybe in the last 2 years or so, since traveling has become so normal and necessary (working with Rebe in Mexico), I have become a more restless person. I don't mean this negatively, I'm learning not ever to be fickle. What I mean is I have found the joys of exploration, to see what's happening, find out what's next, understand as much as I can about people, places, God, life. I think the more we adventure into culture and the planet and all the beautiful people who make it up, the greater the opportunity to see God's stunning face. Anyone can express God's beauty in some way, and members of the Family in Christ in any time, place, or doctrine can give you some insight into God's plans and existence, some insight into yourself and your own humanity.
The psalmist talks about being woven by God in his mother's womb. He acclaims God for His wondrous work. Another translation reads "fearfully and wonderfully made." Alter translates this verse as:
"I acclaim You, for awesomely I am set apart, wondrous are your acts, and my being deeply knows it.
I am set apart." (v.14)
There is a sense of total glorification of God in this verse; the psalmist senses the magical and unfathomable power of the Life behind creation. There is an association in this psalm between the womb and the cosmic depths. I think of God hovering over the unformed galaxies, above time, starting His magnum opus. The body, then, the child growing in her mother's "utmost depths" is a vivid microcosm of that moment of first creation. There is nothing less cosmic and inexplicable about the birth of a perfect, healthy baby than there is about the birth of the universe.
Talking about knowledge, think about the verbs connaitre and savoir in French. (Spanish and I think German are two other languages I know have two words for "to know" as well.) The verb savoir means to know a fact or an idea. Like if you said, "It is 11 p.m.," and I said, "I know." It's the knowledge of awareness, understanding what is. Connaitre is a different knowledge, like the Spanish conocer, it is to know intimately. It is the verb to use when speaking about knowing a person, or getting to know a place or a canon of works by an author or musician. It is the knowledge of being personally acquainted and, we could say, affected by something.
I'll use Spanish to illustrate the difference (it's a little more solid in my mind than French :)
- "Yo se que Dios existe." - I know (am aware) that God exists.
- "Yo conozco Dios." - I know (personally) God.
I also think of conocer/connaitre as exploring something, meeting it. It is the beginning of an exchange of truth and trust until it can be said that "I know this" or "We know one another."
If we think about the way God knows, I'd say it is saber and conocer at once. He is aware of all things, nothing is hidden from Him. But as the Author of all that is, He is also personally acquainted with everything. He knows where this pencil came from; the lead that's in it, He knows from what rock on what continent at what end of the planet it was extracted from. He knows the moment when the seed of the tree that supplied this paper was germinated in the earth and started to grow. He saw its first leaf fall. What ISN'T intimate for God??? God's love is incomprehensible because of the perfect knowledge He has of everything and the limited knowledge we have of very little. So, His love is incomprehensible, but somehow makes real sense. An artist loves her work. A father loves his children. God's knowledge is His love, and His love comes from His personal correspondence with everything that exists.
"As for me, how weighty are your thoughts, O Gd,
how numberous their sum.
Should I count them, they would be more than the sand,
I awake, and am still with You."
The infinite knowledge of God is spellbounding. We all exist because He has willed it. We live, essentially, because He has thought it. I read something by Frederich Beuchner where he was stating an address. Beginning on the street, then he named the state, then America, then the globe, then the universe, and finally, the Mind of God. We don't get away from Him for we are in Him.
The psalmist says, "I awake, and am still with You." Am I always acknowledging Christ, even as I write this? As I eat breakfast? Fall in love? Alter says "What the poet may be imagining is that after the long futile effort of attempting to count God's infinite thoughts, he drifts off in exhaustion, then awakes to discover that God's eternal presence, with all those divine thoughts, is still with him."
If you seek, you will find. I have found that seeking God will never yield empty returns. The infinity of God means that we will never stop learning about or from Him. There is no dead end, the road goes on eternally. It's interesting this psalm is about the depths of God and His forever thoughts, but also about the depths of Man as Creation, the image of the fathomless, wild God is seen in the complex, wonderful potent entity of Human Being. There is a relational aspect to this psalm; God searches us the more we search for Him. But also there is necessarily some exposure on our part as God exposes Himself to us.
The psalm ends with a request: "Search me God and know my heart, probe me and know my mind. And see if there is any vexing way in me, and lead on on the eternal way." Jesus thought the inner motives of a person were key in the formation and execution of the outward life, of action. That's why, for Him, lustful thoughts are already adultery, hatred is already murder (Matt 5:21-30). The knowledge of God goes deep inside us, to places only He has access to; sometimes, we ourselves do not even know what "way" is in us until God's Spirit reveals it. This request for the "eternal way," and all prayers we make for guidance, require trust and an attitude of humility, openness, and submission to God and His will. I think it is an important risk we all must take to be exposed to God's light, and let His love temper and refine us.
To seek God and be searched by Him, we have to be willing to accept His knowledge is forever greater than our own (Isaiah 55:8-9), and to not try and run away from Him, but to recognize His infinite state. He is around every corner, at the bottom of every sea; even within ourselves, He is there. If He is truly what we are anxious to find, we have to become willing to see Him and be prepared for all that could mean. We cannot, and if we love Him, would not, escape Him.
