to go up · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common singular
heaven
שָׁ֭מַיִםSha.ma.yim
H8064
the sky (as aloft · noun, common masculine plural absolute
bed
וְאַצִּ֖יעָהve.'a.Tzi.'ah
H3331
to strew as a surface · conjunction + verb, hiphil infinitive construct, 1st person common singular
hell
שְּׁא֣וֹלshe.'ol
H7585
Hades or the world of the dead (as if a subterranean re… · noun, common both genders singular absolute
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
Amos 9:2-4 Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:
Job 34:21-22 For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings.
Jonah 2:2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
Proverbs 15:11 Hell and destruction are before the LORD: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?
Obadiah 1:4 Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.
Job 26:6 Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering.
Ezekiel 28:12-17 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 139:7-16
It is of great use to us to know the certainty of the things wherein we have been instructed, that we may not only believe them, but be able to tell why we believe them, and to give a reason of the hope that is in us. David is sure that God perfectly knows him and all his ways,
I. Because he is always under his eye. If God is omnipresent, he must needs be omniscient; but he is omnipresent; this supposes the infinite and immensity of his being, from which follows the ubiquity of his presence; heaven and earth include the whole creation, and the Creator fills both (Jer 23:24); he not only knows both, and governs both, but he fills both. Every part of the creation is under God's intuition and i…
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there,.... No man hath ascended or can ascend to heaven of himself; it is an hyperbolical expression, as are those that follow; none but Christ has ascended to heaven by his own power, who descended from it; saints hope to go there at death, and, when they do, they find God there; that is his habitation, his throne is there, yea, that is his throne; here he keeps court and has his attendants, and here he will be seen and enjoyed by his people to all eternity;
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there; which, if understood of the place of the damned, is a place of torment, and a very unfit one to make a bed in, being a lake burning with fire and br…
Psalm 139:7-12
7. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? rind whither shall flee from thy face? 8. If I ascend up into heaters, thou art there; if I lie down in the sepulcher, lo! thou art there. 9. Shall I take the wings of the morning, that I may dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea? 10. Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. 11. If I shall say; at least the darkness shall cover me, and the night shall be light for me; 12. Even the darkness shall not hide from thee, and the night shall be lightened up as day, and darkness as the light.
7. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? I consider that David prosecutes the same idea of its being' impossible that men by a…
The Church Fathers
For Deity alone is uncircumscribed, existing everywhere, and as the same and in the same manner. For if I ascend, saith David, into heaven, thou art there; if I descend into Hades thou art present there; if I should take to myself wings at morning—that is, in the east—and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea—that is, in the west—even there shall thy hand lead me: evidently indicating here the uncircumscribed nature of the Deity
For this reason, of course, it was not enough for Jesus to say, "I will that where I am they also may be," but he added, "with me." For to be with him is a great good. For even the wretched can be where he is because wherever anybody at all may be [there] he also is; but the blessed alone are with him, because they will be unable to be blessed except by his action. Or has it not been truly said to God, "If I ascend into heaven, you are there; and if I descend into hell, you are present"? Or on the other hand is Christ not God's Wisdom, which "reaches everywhere by reason of its purity"?
"If I go up," says he, "to heaven, You are there: if I go down to Hades, You are present" [Psalm 139:8]. At length, miserable runaway, you have learned, that by no means can you make yourself far from Him, from whom you have wished to remove far away. Behold, He is everywhere; thou, whither will you go? He has found counsel, and that inspired by Him, who now deigns to recall him....If by sinning I go down to the depths of wickednesses, and spurn to confess, saying, "Who sees me" (for "in Hades who shall confess to You?" ) there also You are present, to punish. Whither then shall I go that I may flee from Your presence, that is, not find You angry? This plan he found: So will I flee, says he, from Your Face, so will I flee from Your Spirit; from Your avenging Spirit, Your avenging Face thus will I flee.
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
Hades — That which is out of sight, a Greek word used to denote the state or place of the dead. All the dead alike go into this place. To be buried, to go down to the grave, to descend into hades, are…
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…
Hell · scriptures — scriptures
Holy Spirit, The, Is God · As omnipresent — As omnipresent
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 future form אסּק, customary in the Aramaic, may be derived just as well from סלק (סלק), by means of the same mode of assimilation as in יסּב = יסבּב, as from נסק (נסק), which latter is certainly only insecurely established by Dan 6:24, להנסקה (cf. להנזקת, Ezr 4:22; הנפּק, Dan 5:2), since the Nun, as in להנעלה, Dan 4:3, can also be a compensation for the resolved doubling (vid., Bernstein in the Lexicon Chrestom. Kirschianae, and Levy s.v. נסק). אם with the simple future is followed by cohortatives (vid., on Psa 73:16) with the equivalent אשּׂא among them: et si stratum facerem (mihi) infernum (accusative of the object as in Isa 58:5), etc. In other passages the wings of the sun (Mal 4:2)…
down to the grave: God has total access to his entire creation—even the most hard-to-reach places.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 139:8
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. Filling the loftiest region with his yet loftier presence, Jehovah is in the heavenly place, at home, upon his throne. The ascent, if it were possible, would be unavailing for purposes of escape; it would, in fact, be a flying into the centre of the fire to avoid the heat. There would he be immediately confronted by the terrible personality of God. Note the abrupt words—"Thou, there." If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. Descending into the lowest imaginable depths among the dead, there should we find the Lord. Thou! says the Psalmist, as if…
