Psalm 139:13-16

S. Daniel Smith — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 21:04:15 +0000

One of the things I want to do more of through my newsletter and blog is to point readers toward the Bible. I don’t study the Bible enough and doing this will keep me accountable as well. So, in light of the recent Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (I write about it here), I want to focus on a very well-known passage for the pro-life community.

Psalm 139:13-14a

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

It’s easy to see how this passage supports the idea that all life is precious and that saving the unborn is vital to our work as a church body. Can you imagine a world where people don’t know that the Lord knitted them together? Well, look out the window and see it.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The Psalmist had scarcely peered within the veil which hides the nerves, sinews, and blood-vessels from common inspection; the science of anatomy was quite unknown to him; and yet he had seen enough to arouse his admiration of the work and his reverence for the Worker.”ⁱ

Because we know so much more about genetics now than David did when he wrote this psalm, indeed, more than Spurgeon when he wrote about how little David knew, the vast majority of people in the western world don’t see the body’s natural process of creating life as driven by God, or that he plays a role in a baby’s development. And because we do know more about the process now, it can make the psalmist’s thoughts might seem a little childish or naive.

And yet there is a knitting that occurs, isn’t there? We know about cell reproduction and growth now, we understand how the DNA strand is unzipped and recombined, and how parents’ genetics create the little bundle of joy birthed nine months thence. This calls us to praise a God who is complex and intricate, who creates with scientific complexity even as with an artist’s touch.

The thing that makes this short passage shine, however, is found a few verses later, in verse 16:

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there were none of them.

What a promise for us! To know that God knew my days, had written them down, before the first cell split, before the first heartbeat, before the first brainwave. This verse shines a bright light on verses 13 and 14 by showing us that God knew the plan for us before he began knitting us together. How could we do anything else but praise God for this?

iSpurgeon, C. H. “Exposition of Psalms.” The Treasury of David, vol. 7, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, NY, 1886, p. 226.

Psalms – Author S. Daniel Smith

Psalm 139:13-16