What Does Psalm 139:4 Mean in the King James?
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The word is already known before the tongue gives it a voice.
THE MEANING
Even what is still unspoken is fully known to the LORD. His knowing reaches the reader at the threshold between thought and speech, where no sound has yet left the tongue.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the belief that silence can make a word, or the one who holds it, unknowable to God.
THE ROOT
יְדַעְתָּ
yādaʿtā
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“knowest” in this verse is yādaʿtā. The root יָדַע (yādaʿ, to know or perceive by encounter) holds knowing as recognition, not distant information. Here that knowing already reaches the word at the edge of the tongue, before it becomes sound.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge, perception
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows that the verse’s knowing is a kind of perception that takes in the whole word.
yōdēaʿ: One who knows, perceives
יֹדֵעַ
This form names the one who knows; the verse presents the LORD as already perceiving what has not yet been spoken.
THE PATTERN
God’s knowing reaches the unseen interior before it becomes outward speech.
The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.THE THREAD
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.Jeremiah 1:5 uses the same root ידע (y-d-ʿ) for “knew,” placing this knowing before formation; Psalm 139:4 places it before speech. The shared root connects knowing a life and knowing each word at the tongue’s edge.
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