How precious also are your thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
All Commentaries on Psalms 139:17 Go To Psalms 139
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
16. ..."Thine eyes did see Mine imperfect one, and in Thy book shall all be written" (ver. 16), not only the perfect, but also the imperfect. Let not the imperfect fear, only let them advance. Nor yet, because I have said, "let them not fear," let them love their imperfection, and remain there, where they are found. Let them advance, as far as in them lieth. Daily let them add, daily let them approach; yet let them not fall back from the Body of the Lord: that, compacted in one Body and among these members, they may be counted worthy to have that said of them. "By day shall they wander, and none among them." "The Day" was yet on earth, even our Lord Jesus Christ. Whence He said, "Walk while ye have the day." But "by day shall" His imperfect ones "wander." They too thought that our Lord Jesus Christ was only man, that He had not within Him the hidden Godhead, that He was not secretly God, but that He was that only which was seen: this they too thought. ...But what is, "In the day they shall wander"? Shall they perish? Where then is, "In Thy book shall all be written"? When then did they "wander in the day"? When they understood not the Lord set upon earth. And what followeth? "But to me Thy friends are made very honourable, O God" (ver. 17); those very ones, who "wandered in the day, and none was in them," became Thy friends, and were made very honourable to me. That bone was made in them in secret after the resurrection of the Lord, and they suffered for His Name, at whose death they had been amazed. "Mightily strengthened were their chieftainships." They became Apostles, they became leaders of the Church, they became rams leading their flocks, "mightily strengthened."
