The Mystery of Yahweh’s Thoughts

“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.” -Ps. 139.17-18

Psalm 139 is a remarkably intimate and tender song, and it flows from the unique relationship that David had to the Lord. It is a statement of the scrutiny and examination that the King is ever under, not from mere men or even fellow royal leaders, but from the Lord Himself.

David is intensely cognizant of the fact that the Lord of history has not only spanned the nations in a broad sense, but has “searched” and “known” his own heart, down to the innermost parts. Some scholars tell us that there is some form of judgment that must have prompted this psalm, and that the singer was feeling the compression of the Lord’s heart-inspection throughout the ordeal. This was the common Hebraic interpretation of trials and pressures, that the Lord was permitting the tension for the sake of purging and refining His people- or in this case, His servant- unto a greater place of holiness and set apartness.

But in this psalm we are gloriously granted a glimpse into the singer’s tender appreciation of God’s judgments, even when they press down on his own soul, and it is a schoolmaster for us on how we ought to approach seasons of purging and breaking before the Lord. Hans Joachim Kraus thus calls the psalm a “doxology of judgment,” a song of worship produced out of the experience of God’s discipline, which actually proves out the truth of our sonship.

And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” -Heb. 12.5-6

The discipline of the Lord is not a statement then of His standoffishness or indifference, but rather a radically intimate demonstration of His profound love for us and His profound jealousy for His glory. Judgement rightly perceived and responded to produces a greater awe and surrender to the Lord and His ultimately trustworthy ways.

The intention of the “doxology of judgment” is decisive. Yahweh is credited with an absolute knowledge; a knowing and penetration that have no limits. The psalmist submits to the world judge and Creator from whom nothing is hidden. In v. 17 we clearly feel how the singer breaks down under the burden of thoughts and conceptions. He is not in a position to measure the unfathomable depth of what has been said. The doxology transcends the capacity of intellectual comprehension.

(PSALMS: A Continental Commentary, Hans Joachim-Kraus; Fortress Press, p. 517)

In other words, Psalm 139 seeks to declare the unfathomable depth of God’s thoughts toward us, highlighted especially in the intimate exchange of His judgement against our duplicity and mixture. His thoughts toward us are preeminently “precious.”

This evokes highest praise, for we cannot define the height and depth of it all, we can only sink down in submission to the God of Israel, acknowledging our own depravity and inadequacy, and receiving His gift of life forevermore. This revelation escorts us into the ocean of the fear of the Lord, whereby we learn to walk circumspectly before Him, and to be consumed by the joys of eternity and the glories of true worship.

The fear of the God not only enabled a man to acquire knowledge, but also had a predominantly critical function in that it kept awake in the person acquiring the knowledge the awareness that his intellect was directed towards a world in which mystery predominated. -Gerhard Von Rad

(ibid. p. 519)

We cannot categorize the thoughts of God, but when He judges us and reveals that which is duplicitous and hypocritical in our nature, immediately we are overcome with how tender He in fact is. “Mystery predominates” the world of heaven, and this strikes the “hip” of our intellectual pride, bringing us low to the earth, and eventually raising us into the heights of worship.

“How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God!” Though I am in the press of life, and though You have revealed my own radical need of refinement, “I am still with You.” Pressed on every side, we cease looking to men and gaze upwards, upon the glory of the only One who is worthy of our lives. This is the purpose of judgment. It is not some arbitrary or mechanical act, but a catalyst to a higher purpose- “…. to God be glory in the Church.”