Psalms 139:12

Psa 139:12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light [are] both alike [to thee].

Ver. 12. Yea, the darkness hideth not] Heb. darkeneth not from thee, because thine eyes are fiery, Rev 1:14, such as need no outward light; they are more light and radiant than the sun in his strength.

The darkness and the light, &c.] Deo obscura clarent, muta respondent, silentium confitetur, saith an ancient; Night will convert itself into noon before God, and silence prove a speaking evidence.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psa_139:12

The darkness and the light.

The changes of the sky

What is the lesson conveyed by the great alternate changes of the sky? Now it is sweetly luminous, and now a solemn darkness. Strictly speaking, as we all know, there is no change in the sky at all. It is always an infinite darkness, and always lit up by myriads of stupendous suns. But we should not know this if the earth did not turn on her axis, and successively face the sun, and again turn away from him. To the turning of our planet from the sun we owe our knowledge of the universe. In the symbolism of its darkness and light we have our sublimest revelation of God. Light which is called God, and is God, issues for ever from the Infinite Bosom of His darkness. Darkness and light are both alike to Him; for He is as much one as the other. The Son of God, the only-begotten Light, reveals the Father of Lights, as suns reveal the ether. God presents Himself in the light, but also conceals Himself; as we both present ourselves, and hide ourselves, in our garment. Thou coverest Thyself with light as with a garment. As the infinite ether is hidden by the daylight, even so is God hidden by the light of the angelic heavens which reveal Him. Therefore, all those who dwell in the Eternal Light worship the unseen God, and live as seeing the invisible. They know that light is but His effluence. They worship the Light as God, and, again, with silent, ineffable adoration, they worship what is behind the Light. (John Pulsforal, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

12. (Psa 139:12) Even darkness does not make (it) dark to him, and night like dayshines; as the darkness, so the light. The interpretation given of the foregoing verse does not necessarily affect the sense of this, which still meanspledge that nothing can prevent God's seeing either sin or suffering, either the danger of his people or the malice of their enemies. Make dark, as in Psa 105:28. To thee, literally from thee, i.e. so as to conceal from thee.

Joseph Addison Alexander, The Psalms Translated and Explained (1850) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Verse 12. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee] Darkness and light, ignorance and knowledge, are things that stand in relation to us; God sees equally in darkness as in light; and knows as perfectly, however man is enveloped in ignorance, as if all were intellectual brightness. What is to us hidden by darkness, or unknown through ignorance, is perfectly seen and known by God; because he is all sight, all hearing, all feeling, all soul, all spirit-all in ALL, and infinite in himself. He lends to every thing; receives nothing from any thing. Though his essence be unimpartible, yet his influence is diffusible through time and through eternity. Thus God makes himself known, seen, heard, felt; yet, in the infinity of his essence, neither angel, nor spirit, nor man can see him; nor can any creature comprehend him, or form any idea of the mode of his existence. And yet vain man would be wise, and ascertain his foreknowledge, eternal purposes, infinite decrees, with all operations of infinite love and infinite hatred, and their objects specifically and nominally, from all eternity, as if himself had possessed a being and powers co-extensive with the Deity! O ye wise fools! Jehovah, the fountain of eternal perfection and love, is as unlike your creeds, as he is unlike yourselves, forgers of doctrines to prove that the source of infinite benevolence is a streamlet of capricious love to thousands, while he is an overflowing, eternal, and irresistible tide of hatred to millions of millions both of angels and men! The antiproof of such doctrines is this: he bears with such blasphemies, and does not consume their abettors. "But nobody holds these doctrines." Then I have written against nobody; and have only to add the prayer, May no such doctrines ever disgrace the page of history; or farther dishonour, as they have done, the annals of the Church!

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(12) Hideth not.—Better to keep as near as possible to the original maketh not dark. Others render cannot be too dark for thee. The highest development of the psalmist’s thought is of course to be found in St. John’s declaration, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”

Shineth.—Or, giveth light.

The darkness . . .—Literally, as darkness, so light.

“God is the light which, never seen itself, makes all things visible, and clothes itself in colours.”—RICHTER.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For thou hast possessed my reins,.... His thoughts and counsels, the reins being the seat of instruction and counsel; hence God is called the trier of the reins, and searcher of the hearts of the children of men; he is the possessor or master of their most secret thoughts, and thoroughly knows them; see Psa 7:9; they are also the seat of the affections, which are naturally sinful and inordinate, and set upon carnal and earthly things; but the Lord possesses and engrosses the affections of his people in the best sense, Psa 73:25; moreover the reins are the seat of lust, the bed in which it is conceived and brought forth, and God knows the first motions of it there; and that the imagination of the thought of man's heart is evil continually, Gen 6:5;

thou hast covered me in my mother's womb; with the secundine, or afterbirth, in which he carefully wrapped him, a proof of his knowledge of him, and care for him in the womb; or with skin and flesh he covered his bones with as they grew there; see Job 10:11; or the sense is, he protected and defended him in his embryo state, and when ripe for birth took him out from thence, and held him up ever since, Psa 22:9; he had his eye on him when no other eye could see him, not even his mother that bare him, and before ever he himself saw light. The Targum is,

"thou hast founded me in my mother's womb.''

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee - Margin, as in Hebrew, “darkeneth not.” Darkness does not make darkness to thee. It makes things dark to us; not to him. So it is in natural darkness; so in moral darkness ness. It seems dark to us; it is not so to him. Things appear dark to us - disappointment, bereavement, trouble, care, losses; but all is light to God. The existence of sin and suffering on the earth seems dark to us; not to him, for he sees the reasons and the end of all.

But the night shineth as the day - One is as bright and clear to him as the other.

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee - Margin, as in Hebrew, “As is the darkness so is the light.” To thee there is no difference. All is light.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Shineth, or enlighteneth, as this word is used, Psa 19:8; Pro 29:13, &c.; discovereth me and all mine actions.

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee: this is repeated so oft to reprove and confute the ridiculous conceits of many ungodly men, who flatter themselves with hopes of secrecy and impunity for those sins which they commit in the dark. See Isa 29:15.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ver. 12. Yea, of a surety, beyond all denial.

The darkness hideth not from thee; it veils nothing, it is not the medium of concealment in any degree what ever. It hides from men, but not from God.

But the night shineth as the day: it is but another form of day: it shines, revealing all; it "shineth as the day", quite as clearly and distinctly manifesting all that is done.

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. This sentence seems to sum up all that went before, and most emphatically puts the negative upon the faintest idea of hiding under the cover of night. Men cling to this notion, because it is easier and less expensive to hide under darkness than to journey to remote places; and therefore the foolish thought is here beaten to pieces by statements which in their varied forms effectually batter it. Yet the ungodly are still duped by their grovelling notions of God, and enquire, "How doth God know?" They must fancy that he is as limited in his powers of observation as they are, and yet if they would but consider for a moment they would conclude that he who could not see in the dark could not be God, and he who is not present everywhere could not be the Almighty Creator. Assuredly God is in all places, at all times, and nothing can by any possibility be kept away from his all observing, all comprehending mind. The Great Spirit comprehends within himself all time and space, and yet he is infinitely greater than these, or aught else that he has made.

Ver. 12. The darkness hideth not from thee. Though the place where we sin be to men as dark as Egypt, yet to God it is as light as Goshen. William Secker.

Psalms 139:13*

Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Even there I have no asylum, for no darkness will obscure [anything] from You.

as darkness, so is the light Both are the same to You.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.