Psalm 139:13-16
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
This psalm began with David celebrating God’s total understanding of him—his every thought and word and deed. Here, David focuses on God’s knowledge of him from the time God made him in his mother’s womb. Some contemporary ethicists distinguish between a human person and a human being and claim that while an unborn baby is a human being, they’re not yet a human person entitled to human rights, because they don’t have the same mental capacities as older humans. But the Bible defines our humanness not in terms of our mental capacities, but in terms of our relationship with God, the one who makes us in his image.
In this psalm, we see God’s attention to David from the moment of his conception and how God already saw the whole of David’s life before he had even been conceived. God makes each of us fearfully and wonderfully from the first, and he loves us from our embryonic stage.