When Does Life Begin? The Biblical Answer

There really is no adequate way to describe how fantastic what you’re about to read truly is. Tucked away in Psalm 139 are two verses that are just inconceivably written. If not for God, there is no explanation of how anyone could know the inner workings and mechanics of an embryo and a baby in the mother’s womb. But this Psalm demonstrates that God does. When does life begin and what part does God have in it all? You’re about to find out.

Psalm 139: 15) “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”

My substance was not hid from thee. My bones to which my strength is built upon are evident to you Lord as you fashioned me within the mother’s womb.

“Curiously wrought” or the Hebrew, “raqam“, literally means embroidered or needlework. It brings to mind imagery of God weaving and stitching our bones and body together into an intricate fabric as perfect and beautiful as it is particular and unique.

To highlight the great significance of the phrase “Curiously wrought” or “raqam“, as it is being used to describe God making a baby, the only other time raqam is ever used in the Bible is when the Lord is speaking to Moses on how to make the Tabernacle of the Congregation (God’s portable residence), The Holy of Holies (The tabernacles inner sanctum) or the Holy clothes to be worn by the High Priest Aaron. The one exception is here, when the Psalmist is describing God creating a child in the mother’s womb.

“The lower parts of the earth” is Hebraism, a poetic way of saying within the mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:16) “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”

“Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect.” God saw us and knew us when we were nothing more than an embryo. Not shaped or formed and as of yet, unknown to the world. But God already knew us.

“My substance, yet being unperfect” comes from the single word, “golem”. It literally means unformed matter that is rolled up into a ball, or by definition, an embryo.

The term used of God creating a child is a term that is reserved solely for God’s most Holy of holiest creations. The Bible describes God seeing and knowing us when we are just an embryo and then writing our names in the Book of Life.

“Seeing that thou didst know me before I was composed of either flesh or bone, much more now must thou know me when thou hast fashioned me,” commentary from the 1599 Geneva Bible.

God knew us before we were even conceived of matter.

Dear abortionists. You are killing what God has created and already claimed as His. You may be destroying God’s precious needlework, but the name of the child has already been written in the Book of Life and its soul will live on forever.

Bill Hitchcock