This is intolerable! No matter where the psalmist goes, God is there first. What the writer had said at first is true at last: "Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me." He is trapped. He cannot get away. This relentlessly pursuing God goes after him no matter where he attempts to flee.
And then, apparently, the psalmist realized that he was engaged in a losing battle. He couldn't get away from God. God was determined to have control over his life. Perhaps, strange thought, this was what life was all about. Perhaps he was made to surrender, to acknowledge this God, to turn about and meet him, rather than fleeing him. And so a new note enters into the psalm (v. 13). The writer turns from fear to praise. And now God's thoughts, instead of being fearful, are "precious" (v. 17). Now instead of fleeing from God for fear he will have to be remade, he turns to God in perfect trust and confidence and asks to be remade:
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
( Ps. 139: 23, 24)
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