(16) This difficult verse, rendered word for word, gives--

"My f?tus (literally, rolled) saw thine eyes,

And on thy book all of them were written;

Days were formed, and not (or, as the Hebrew margin, to him) one in them."

The reading "substance yet being imperfect" of the Authorised Version follows the LXX. and Vulg., and (Symmachus, "shapeless thing") periphrastically denotes the embryo, which the Hebrew word--literally, rolled, or wrapped, used in 2Kings 2:8, "of a mantle," in Ezekiel 27:24, "bales" (Authorised Version, "clothes;" margin, "foldings")--almost scientifically describes. (Comp. Job 10:8-12; 2 Maccabees 7:22.)

Others take it of the ball of the threads of destiny; but this is not a Hebrew conception. By inserting the word members, the Authorised Version suggests a possible, but not a probable, interpretation. The Hebrew language likes to use a pronoun before the word to which it refers has occurred (see Note, Psalm 68:14); and, in spite of the accents, we must refer all of them to "days" (Authorised Version, "in continuance").

"Thine eyes beheld my embryo,

And in thy book were written

All the days, the days

Which were being formed,

When as yet there were none of them."

But a much more satisfactory sense is obtained by adopting one slight change and following Symmachus in the last line--

"The days which are all reckoned, and not one of them is wanting."

All the ancient versions make that which is written in God's book either the days of life, or men born in the course of these days, each coming into being according to the Divine will.

Verse 16. - Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; or, "my embryo." The Hebrew text has but the single word גלמי, which probably means, "the still unformed embryonic mass" (Hengstenberg). And in thy book all my members were written; literally, all of them; but the pronoun has no antecedent. Professor Cheyne and others suspect the passage to have suffered corruption. But the general meaning can scarcely have been very different from that assigned to the passage in the Authorized Version. Which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. Modern critics mostly translate "the days," or "my days," "were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them;" i.e. "my life was planned out by God, and settled, before I began to be."

139:7-16 We cannot see God, but he can see us. The psalmist did not desire to go from the Lord. Whither can I go? In the most distant corners of the world, in heaven, or in hell, I cannot go out of thy reach. No veil can hide us from God; not the thickest darkness. No disguise can save any person or action from being seen in the true light by him. Secret haunts of sin are as open before God as the most open villanies. On the other hand, the believer cannot be removed from the supporting, comforting presence of his Almighty Friend. Should the persecutor take his life, his soul will the sooner ascend to heaven. The grave cannot separate his body from the love of his Saviour, who will raise it a glorious body. No outward circumstances can separate him from his Lord. While in the path of duty, he may be happy in any situation, by the exercise of faith, hope, and prayer.Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect,.... The word (q) for "substance" signifies a bottom of yarn wound up, or any rude or unformed lump; and designs that conglomerated mass of matter separated in the womb, containing all the essentials of the human frame, but not yet distinguished or reduced into any form or order; yet, even when in this state, the eyes of the Lord see it and all its parts distinctly;

and in thy book all my members were written: which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them; in the book of God's eternal mind, and designs, the plan of the human body was drawn, all the parts of it described, and their form, places, and uses fixed, even when as yet not one of them was in actual being; but in due time they are all exactly formed and fashioned according to the model of them in the mind of God; who has as perfect knowledge of them beforehand as if they were written down in a book before him, Or "in thy book are written all of them, what days they should be fashioned"; not only each of the members of the body were put down in this book, but each of the days in which they should be formed and come into order: "when" as yet there was "none of them"; none of those days, before they took place, even before all time; the Targum is,

"in the book of thy memory all my days are written, in the day the world was created, from the beginning that all creatures were created.''

(q) "informe meum", Montanus; "glomus meam", Michaelis.