Formed in Secret

In Psalm 139, David says that darkness and light are alike to God, night bright as the day (v. 12). Such a God can form a man in a secret place (v. 15). A God for whom night shines is a God who sees what cannot be seen, David’s golem (“unformed substance,” v. 16); He is a God for whom the dark future is already fixed in His book (v. 16).

David’s way of describing his own formation is notable. God formed his inward parts, weaving him like a weaver in his mother’s womb (v. 13). The image shifts from the womb to the earth, and David is suddenly Adam, formed not in his mother’s womb but in the “depths of the earth” (v. 15). Adam was born from his mother earth and his divine Father; David too is a product of heaven and earth. He too is an Adam.

Lexicons aren’t given to theologizing, but Gesenius says this about the Hebrew word tachtiy, translated as “lower parts”: “here of the womb of the mother [but it is the formation of the members of Christ’s mystical body].” Just so: David speaks of his own formation in the womb as an Adamic formation from the ground, and so points ahead to the formation of a new Adam, a totus Adam, head and body.

And we can tease that out in several directions. “Depths of the earth” is usually a place of punishment, not far from the “depths of Sheol” (cf. Psalm 63:9; 86:13). But it is from such deep and secret places that the new Adam is formed. The Last Adam Himself is raised from the depths of Sheol, and his limbs are formed from the dead raised from the depths of the earth.

And, this depth is also a womb: Christ is formed in “mother earth,” in the church our mother, the apostolic church, in labor until the Last Adam is completely formed (Galatians 4:19).