The Daily Office · Psalm 139:1–6
You have searched me
Psalm 139:1–6
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What's happening here
Psalm 139 is one of the most personal in the Psalter — a long interior monologue addressed directly to God, with no royal court, no national crisis, no enemies until the jarring turn at verse nineteen. The first six verses describe a God who knows too much, and the psalmist cannot decide whether to be grateful or overwhelmed. The verb that opens the psalm repeats again and again through the section. The Hebrew word is not the knowledge of facts.
The word that matters
Hebrew · to know — by experience, by contact, not by report
Yada is the Hebrew Bible's primary verb for knowing, and it covers terrain English splits up. The same verb is used for Adam knowing his wife (a euphemism for sexual intimacy), for a shepherd knowing his sheep, for God knowing Abraham. Yada is never the knowledge of facts about something; it is the knowledge that comes from contact. When Psalm 139 says, "O LORD, you have searched me and known me," the speaker is not reporting that God has data. He is reporting that God has come close.
Where else this shows up
Jeremiah 1:5
"Before I formed you in the womb I yada-ed you." Yada as the prior reality behind a person's existence.
John 10:14
"I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me." Jesus translating yada into Greek.
1 Corinthians 13:12
"Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." The endgame of yada.