Psalms 139:7-10
“Where could I go from your Spirit? Or where could I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there! If I take the wings of the dawn, and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me.”
Where this sits
From a psalm about being thoroughly known. The question that opens this section is asked without hostility, but it is a real question.
Reflection
The question is genuine, and it is worth letting it be uncomfortable before the answer arrives. Where could I flee from your presence? People do ask this. Being fully known is not automatically a comfort; it depends entirely on who is doing the knowing.
What follows is a survey of the extremes. Up to heaven, down to Sheol — the highest and the lowest points available in Hebrew cosmology. Then the wings of the dawn, which is the sun coming up in the east, carried west across the sea. Vertical and horizontal, top to bottom and one end to the other. David is checking the map for a gap.
There is none, and the discovery turns as he reports it. He does not say: you would find me. He says: even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me. Being located turns out to mean being held. The inescapability is the same fact as the security.
The darkest option is the one to notice. If I make my bed in Sheol — the place of the dead, and in the Old Testament a genuinely bleak one, not a metaphor for a low mood. He includes it deliberately, and gets the same answer as everywhere else: behold, you are there.
Written centuries before anyone had a clear doctrine of resurrection, that line is doing more than it strictly knew.
- Theme:
- Presence
- Book:
- Psalms