Psalms 139:16 - Exposition

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect ; or, "my embryo." The Hebrew text has but the single word גלמי , which probably means, "the still unformed embryonic mass" (Hengstenberg). And in thy book all my members were written ; literally, all of them ; but the pronoun has no antecedent. Professor Cheyne and others suspect the passage to have suffered corruption. But the general meaning can scarcely have been very different from that assigned to the passage in the Authorized Version. Which in continuance were fashioned , when as yet there was none of them. Modern critics mostly translate "the days," or "my days," "were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them;" i . e . "my life was planned out by God, and settled, before I began to be."