Advent 2025, Week 3 – Psalm 139, Part 1
This guest post is by Molly Stouffer, a ministry student at Regent University.
I want you to imagine with me waking up in the middle of the night. And instead of drifting off to sleep again, you realize something. You aren’t where you fell asleep. You’re not even home.
And yet it’s the middle of the night, so it’s so dark and you can’t even tell exactly where you even are.
In this scenario, how would you feel? Maybe scared, confused, frightened, or afraid?
What would you do? Would you try and fall back asleep thinking, “Oh, it’ll be okay when I wake up?” Would you sit still in bed waiting for something to happen?
Probably not.
I think the most sensible thing, and the thing I would probably do, is I would try to find some kind of light.
This week we’re going to look at Psalm 139, especially verses 11 and 12, “If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”
So a little bit of background here. Psalm 139 is written by David.
Most bibles note that, but what they don’t mention is that it’s written by David around the time of 1048 BC. If you don’t know anything special about that year, that’s okay. Some scholars believe this psalm was written by David around the time that he would have been crowned king over Israel.
In 1 Chronicles 13:1-4, we see David go before leaders from all across the assembly of Israel, and the assembly decides that what David pleads for, the Ark of the Covenant, is what was right in their eyes. In 2 Samuel 5:3, David is then anointed as king over all of Israel. This psalm is written from the position that David is experiencing these blessings from God.
After a long period of darkness over Israel, David’s rise to power on the throne would have been a light at the end of the tunnel for so many of God’s people.
With that context in mind, let’s focus on Psalm 139, verse 11, “If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.”
This verse, from a first glance, may appear that David, as the psalmist, is expressing a desire to flee something. But when we understand some of the words in verse 11, and its surrounding context (the verses before and after), and what they explain, we can see the true meaning emerge.
In the next post, we’ll start that deeper study by looking at the word “cover” in verse 11.
Photo by Илья Мельниченко on Unsplash
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