Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
David refuses the hiding places where men cloak themselves in lies. He fixes on a truth that strips all pretense bare: nothing escapes God's sight, not because He watches from afar, but because He shaped us bone by bone in darkness and cannot be ignorant of what He has made.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 139:1-24
Thou hast beset me behind and before. As though we were caught in an ambush, or besieged by an army which has wholly beleaguered the city walls, we are surrounded by the Lord. God has set us where we be, and beset us wherever we be.
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.
Commenting on Psalm 139:1-6