Psalms 139:14
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works; and that my soul knows right well.
American King James Version (AKJV)
I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works; and that my soul knows right well.
American Standard Version (ASV)
I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
I will give you praise, for I am strangely and delicately formed; your works are great wonders, and of this my soul is fully conscious.
Webster's Revision
I will praise thee: for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: wonderful are thy works; and that my soul well knoweth.
World English Bible
I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well.
English Revised Version (ERV)
I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: wonderful are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
Clarke's Psalms 139:14 Bible Commentary
I am fearfully and wonderfully made - The texture of the human body is the most complicated and curious that can be conceived. It is, indeed, wonderfully made; and it is withal so exquisitely nice and delicate, that the slightest accident may impair or destroy in a moment some of those parts essentially necessary to the continuance of life; therefore, we are fearfully made. And God has done so to show us our frailty, that we should walk with death, keeping life in view; and feel the necessity of depending on the all-wise and continual superintending care and providence of God.
Psalm 139:14His tibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit atque horror.
Lucret. 3:28.
continued...
Barnes's Psalms 139:14 Bible Commentary
I will praise thee - I will not merely admire what is so great and marvelous, but I will acknowledge thee in a public manner as wise, and holy, and good: as entitled to honor, love, and gratitude.
For I am fearfully and wonderfully made - The word rendered "fearfully" means properly "fearful things;" things suited to produce fear or reverence. The word rendered "wonderfully made" means properly to distinguish; to separate. The literal translation of this - as near as can be given - would be, "I am distinguished by fearful things;" that is, by things in my creation which are suited to inspire awe. I am distinguished among thy works by things which tend to exalt my ideas of God, and to fill my soul with reverent and devout feelings. The idea is, that he was "distinguished" among the works of creation, or so "separated" from other things in his endowments as to work in the mind a sense of awe. He was made different from inanimate objects, and from the brute creation; he was "so" made, in the entire structure of his frame, as to fill the mind with wonder. The more anyone contemplates his own bodily formation, and becomes acquainted with the anatomy of the human frame, and the more he understands of his mental organization, the more he will see the force and propriety of the language used by the psalmist.
Marvellous are thy works - Fitted are they to excite wonder and admiration. The particular reference here is to his own formation; but the same remark may be made of the works of God in general.
And that my soul knoweth right well - Margin, as in Hebrew, "greatly." I am fully convinced of it. I am deeply impressed by it. We can see clearly that the works of God are "wonderful," even if we can understand nothing else about them.