Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.
- KJV Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
- BSB Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be.
- NASB Your eyes have seen my formless substance; And in Your book were written All the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
- NLT You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God saw David's unformed body and had written all his ordained days before any existed. It teaches that God sovereignly knows and appoints the course of a life.
Overview
David affirms that his days were 'written' in God's book before he had lived a single one, expressing God's foreknowledge and providential ordering of life. Faithful Christians read this as comfort that our times are in God's hands (Psalm 31:15), while taking care not to flatten the Bible's call to live responsibly under God. The God who ordains our days is the same who, in Christ, holds the believer's life secure (John 10:28-29).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 3
- Ps 56:8You count my wanderings. You put my tears into your bottle. Aren’t they in your book?
- Mal 3:16Then those who feared Yahweh spoke one with another; and Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared Yahweh, and who honored his name.
- Rev 20:12I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and they opened books. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works.
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 139:16 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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