{"id":18325,"date":"2016-08-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=89"},"modified":"2016-08-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T00:00:00","slug":"formed-in-secret-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/08\/formed-in-secret-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Formed in Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><span class=\"drop-cap\">I<\/span>n 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\u2019s <em>golem<\/em> (\u201cunformed substance,\u201d v. 16); He is a God for whom the dark future is already fixed in His book (v. 16).<\/p>\n<p>David\u2019s way of describing his own formation is notable. God formed his inward parts, weaving him like a weaver in his mother\u2019s womb (v. 13). The image shifts from the womb to the earth, and David is suddenly Adam, formed not in his mother\u2019s womb but in the \u201cdepths of the earth\u201d (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.<\/p>\n<p>Lexicons aren\u2019t given to theologizing, but Gesenius says this about the Hebrew word <em>tachtiy<\/em>, translated as \u201clower parts\u201d: \u201chere of the womb of the mother [but it is the formation of the members of Christ\u2019s mystical body].\u201d 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 <em>totus Adam<\/em>, head and body.<\/p>\n<p>And we can tease that out in several directions. \u201cDepths of the earth\u201d is usually a place of punishment, not far from the \u201cdepths of Sheol\u201d (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. <\/p>\n<p>And, this depth is also a womb: <em>Christ<\/em> is formed in \u201cmother earth,\u201d in the church our mother, the apostolic church, in labor until the Last Adam is completely formed (Galatians 4:19).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s golem (\u201cunformed substance,\u201d v. 16); He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-ot-psalms"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Formed in Secret<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/08\/formed-in-secret-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Formed in Secret\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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). 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