¹O Lord, You have searched me and known me. ²You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar … ²³Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; ²⁴and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

To the faithful, this psalm brings security, comfort, and the desire for closer intimacy with God. But to those who harbor sin and evil intentions, fear repels them to hide their sins and the disloyalty in their hearts from God. The former invite God’s searching eyes, while the latter run and hide. The knowledge of God’s omniscience and omnipresence is wonderful to one person but terrifying to another. The Lord knows the secret, deep things of our hearts. He is always with us, we can’t hide from Him, and we can’t hide anything from Him. The supreme irony is that when a sinner ceases trying to escape the relentless pursuit of God, he will discover with great delight that God does not seek to harm him but to love him. This psalm reveals that God is intensely interested in us as individuals. He desires an intimacy with us that will satisfy the deepest longings of our souls to be fully known, accepted, and loved.

 The first section of this psalm (vss. 1-6) presents a beautiful word picture of God’s omniscience—a masterpiece of poetry. The nuance of wording and grammar points to God continually searching and knowing David, both in the past and in David’s present. Note the distinctive words: the Lord has searched (vs 1a), known (vs. 1, 4), knows (vs. 2), understands (vs. 2), scrutinizes (vs. 3a), and is intimately acquainted (vs. 3b) with David. The psalmist recognizes that the Lord has enclosed him (vs. 5a, see Job 1:9-10) and laid His hand upon him (vs. 5b). God is not just a mind-reader, He understands the meaning and motivations of every thought. He is the protective barrier encircling the individual whom He cares for as His own. David’s contemplation only touches the surface of an eternal well of the knowledge of God, but he knows enough to exclaim: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it” (vs. 6). His joy cannot be contained! (vs. 6).

The poetic expressions of verses 1-6 are a profound testimony from the heart of David about God’s intimate knowledge of him as an individual. The Lord actively knows each of us individually, personally, and intimately. This is true, not only of us but for each one of the billions and billions of people who have ever existed, including those who died in miscarriage and abortion,

The psalm moves to God’s omnipresence (vss. 7-12). David uses rhetorical questions to express his amazement: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I go from your presence?” The answer is that there is no escaping God’s presence anywhere because He is everywhere present. Using a figure of speech called merism to express a spectrum of realities by referring to the extremes, David proclaims that God is present in heaven and in Sheol (vss. 7a-8). [Note: The word Sheol encapsulates the limited OT portrayal of the afterlife and it refers to the afterlife or the underworld, symbolized by the grave.] God is present everywhere on earth: it would be impossible to escape his presence even if one could fly like a bird to the eastern horizon or travel to the farthest reaches of the ocean (which to Jews living in Israel would be beyond the Mediterranean horizon west of Israel). The God of Israel is not geographically limited as were the imagined pagan gods in the ancient world. He is God and Lord over all the universe. One cannot escape God’s spiritual searchlight by running to the darkness, for He does not need light to see (vss. 11-12). It is all the same to Him.

When David asks where he can flee from God’s presence (vs. 7), this suggests that there are times when even the most godly people may feel like hiding from the Lord. Knowing that the Lord’s pure eyes can burn through the fig leaf coverings of our souls can be unsettling. Accepting and embracing transparency, which borders on resignation, can leave us feeling naked, ashamed, and fearful. A heart that is turned toward God takes hold of the knowledge that He is holy, righteous, and perfect. Ultimately, our fear gives way to seeing the shining light of His wonderful thoughts about us. In popular idiom, He is leaning in toward us, not against us. Though we may be tempted to, why should we run from Him, knowing that though we are fully exposed to the Lord we are fully loved by Him. Despite our sinfulness, our souls’ darkness, and our propensity to hide, He still loves us and will chase after us wherever we may run. This knowledge leads us to rest in the security of God’s love, for if He accepts us after seeing us as we are, we have nothing to fear. His hand is upon us (vs. 5) and we are protected. It doesn’t get any better than that!

The incredible knowledge of God’s omniscience and omnipresence leads David to plumb the depths of the Lord’s intimacy with him. One can imagine his astonishment as he contemplates with amazement how God had created, designed, and fashioned him from his conception inside his mother (vs. 13). With modern science today, we can appreciate on a different level the wonder of God forming David from the DNA material inherited from his parents and ancestors. God knows each of us quite well!

“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” (vss. 14-16)

Our souls resonate with David’s when he can’t help but burst out with the refrain:

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You!” (vs. 17-18)

The extreme invective against the wicked which follows in vss. 19-24 seems, on the surface, out of place with the previous verses. However, in context, David’s prayer is not vindictive or sub-spiritual. Rather, after contemplating his own situation, exposed to God’s searching gaze, David asserts his loyalty toward God by denouncing those who stand against God. This is akin to the apostle Paul calling down curses on anyone who preaches a distorted gospel of works in defiance of God’s grace, even if he, Paul himself, should be found guilty of that distortion (see Gal. 1:6-9). In fact, David follows his denunciation of the wicked with the invitation for God to continue searching him for “any hurtful way” in his life (vs. 23-24). He knows from his own life experience that he could easily fall into disloyalty to God. After all, he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered Uriah, her husband. David echoes what he knows of God’s anger toward unrepentant sinners. Indeed, we can surmise that he would welcome the conversion and forgiveness of the wicked which he himself had experienced (see Psalm 51 and 32). But his loyalty to the Lord is so great that his hatred for those who continue to disavow Yahweh is also great. This is not so foreign to our NT ears when we consider Jesus’ teaching that our loyalty to Him should be so great that, by comparison, our affection and commitment to our parents should be like hatred (Luke 14:26).

God deals with the deep issues of the heart. Nothing is hidden from Him. We do ourselves an enormous service by opening ourselves to the Lord and inviting Him to search the hidden crevasses of our hearts, to examine and expose to us our sinful ways.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” (Ps 139:23–24)