Before the Shepherd: Psalm 22, Psalm 139, and the Beginning of Life

We all know Psalm 23, most by heart. It’s comforting, it's uplifting, and it’s encouraging, but sometimes the problem with knowing one so well is not knowing the others.

Psalm 22 caught my attention recently, specifically verses 9 & 10. 

“Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”

This led me to look more closely at Psalm 139 as well. It is too long to quote in full here, so I will pull out a few key phrases.

“You have searched me... You perceive my thoughts from afar... You are familiar with all my ways... Where can I flee from your presence? Even there your hand will guide me... For you created my inmost being... You knit me together in my mother’s womb... Your eyes saw my unformed body...”

What I see here is an active God, intimately involved in every stage of our lives, from before conception to our final breath. Psalm 22:9–10 and 139 together form one of the most detailed pictures of human life as known and held by God, so much so that even before the sperm meets the egg in the womb, we are already fully seen and known by Him.

“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

“from my mother’s womb”

While a recent line of thinking argues that life begins only at the first breath after birth, referencing Adam and Eve and the breath of life by God in that discussion, it is worth realizing that their creation was unique and does not negate the role of a womb.

Adam and Eve were formed fully as human beings without a womb because they were the first humans; there was no womb for them to come from. In that unique creation situation, 1) Eve was formed by God with a womb, and 2) Scripture emphasizes God’s direct involvement in forming their lives; He knit them together from dust and a rib.

And more broadly, Psalm 22:9–10 and 139 continue to emphasize that same pattern for all of humanity. He sees, knows, and discerns even before we are visible to the naked eye or microscope. “Your eyes saw my unformed body…” “ from my mother’s womb…” And since we do not have a physical body yet at this point, that is our soul He is seeing. 

So where does our value start, then? Does it begin where God says it begins, or where human reasoning tries to place it?

© 2026 Jane Isley.

Want more content like this? Explore more articles in Knowing God.

ko-fi