to be familiar with · verb, hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine singular
ways
דְּרָכַ֥יde.ra.Khai
H1870
a road (as trodden) · noun, common both genders plural construct + pronominal suffix
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jeremiah 23:24 Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.
Job 31:4 Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps?
Genesis 28:10-17 And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran.
Proverbs 5:20-21 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
2 Samuel 11:27 And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing that Dav…
2 Samuel 12:9-12 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and ha…
Psalms 121:3-8 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Psalms 139:18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 139:1-6
David here lays down this great doctrine, That the God with whom we have to do has a perfect knowledge of us, and that all the motions and actions both of our inward and of our outward man are naked and open before him.
I. He lays down this doctrine in the way of an address to God; he says it to him, acknowledging it to him, and giving him the glory of it. Divine truths look fully as well when they are prayed over as when they are preached over, and much better than when they are disputed over. When we speak of God to him himself we shall find ourselves concerned to speak with the utmost degree both of sincerity and reverence, which will be likely to make the impressions the deeper.
II. He l…
Thou compassest my path and my lying down,.... The Targum adds,
"to study in the law.''
His walk in the daytime, and every step he took, and his lying down at night. It denotes his perfect knowledge of all his actions, day and night; he surrounds every path of man, that they cannot escape his knowledge. Or, "thou winnowest", as some render the word (c); he distinguishes actions; he discerns and separates the good from the bad, or the goodness of an action from the evil and imperfection of it, as in winnowing the wheat is separated from the chaff. Or, "thou measurest my squaring" (d); all his dimensions, his length and breadth, as he lay down in his bed;
and art acquainted with all my ways…
Psalm 139:1-6
1. O Jehovah! thou hast searched me, and knowest me. 2. Thou hast known my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. 3. Thou besiegest my path, and my lying clown, and art acquainted with all my ways. 4. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo! O Lord! Thou knowest it altogether. 5. Thou hast shut me up behind and before, and hast laid thine hand upon me. 6. Thy knowledge is wonderful above me: [200] it is high, I cannot attain to it.
1. O Jehovah! thou hast searched me David declares, in the outset of this Psalm, that he does not come before God with any idea of its being possible to succeed by dissimulation, as hypocrites will take advantag…
The Church Fathers
"Thou hast understood my thoughts from afar; Thou hast tracked out my path and my limit" (ver. 3); "and all my ways Thou hast seen beforehand" (ver. 4). What is, "from afar"? While I am yet in my pilgrimage, before I reach that, my true country, Thou hast known my thoughts. ...The younger son went into a far country. After his toil and suffering and tribulation and want, he thought on his father, and desired to return, and said, "I will arise, and go to my father." "I will arise," said he, for before he had sat. Here then thou mayest recognise him saying, "Thou hast known my down-sitting and up-rising." I sat, in want; I arose, in longing for Thy Bread. "Thou hast understood my thoughts from afar." For far indeed had I gone; but where is not He whom I had left? Wherefore the Lord saith in the Gospel, that his father met him as he was coming. Truly; for "he had understood his thoughts from afar." "My path," he saith; what, but a bad path, the path he had walked to leave his father? ...What is, "my path"? that by which I have gone. What is, "my limit"? that whereunto I have reached. "Thou hast tracked out my path and my limit." That limit of mine, far distant as it was, was not far from Thine eyes. Far had I gone, and yet Thou wast there. "And all my ways Thou hast seen beforehand." He said not, "hast seen," but, "hast seen beforehand." Before I went by them, before I walked in them, Thou didst see them beforehand; and Thou didst permit me in toil to go my own ways, that, if I desired not to toil, I might return into Thy ways. "For there is no deceit in my tongue." What meant he by this? Lo, I confess to Thee, I have walked in my own way, I am become far from Thee, I have departed from Thee, with whom it was well with me, and to my good it was ill with me without Thee. ...
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Psalms, Book Of — The present Hebrew name of the book is Tehill’im, “Praises;” but in the actual superscriptions of the psalms the word Tehillah is applied only to one, (Psalms 145:1) ... which is indeed emphatically…
God · Is declared to be: Omniscient — Is declared to be: Omniscient
Providence Of God, The · Is all pervading — Is all pervading
Wisdom Of God, The · Exhibited in knowing: The actions — Exhibited in knowing: The actions
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The Aramaic forms in this strophe are the ἅπαξ λεγομ רע (ground-form רעי) in Psa 139:2 and Psa 139:17, endeavour, desire, thinking, like רעוּת and רעיון in the post-exilic books, from רעה (רעא), cupere, cogitare; and the ἅπ. λεγ. רבע in Psa 139:3, equivalent to רבץ, a lying down, if רבעי be not rather an infinitive like בּלעי in Job 7:19, since ארחי is undoubtedly not inflected from ארח, but, as being infinitive, like עברי in Deu 4:21, from ארח; and the verb ארח also, with the exception of this passage, only occurs in the speeches of Elihu (Job 34:8), which are almost more strongly Aramaizing than the Book of Job itself. Further, as an Aramaizing feature we have the objective relation ma…
The Lord’s omniscience and omnipotence provide comfort to the godly, but they imprison the hearts of the wicked (2:3).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 139:3
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down. My path and my pallet, my running and my resting, are alike within the circle of thine observation. Thou dost surround me even as the air continually surrounds all creatures that live. I am shut up within the wall of thy being; I am encircled within the bounds of thy knowledge. Waking or sleeping I am still observed of thee. I may leave thy path, but you never leave mine. I may sleep and forget thee, but thou dost never slumber, nor fall into oblivion concerning thy creature. The original signifies not only surrounding, but winnowing and sifting. The Lord judges our act…
