Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 139:11

"If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me, And the light about me shall be night;" — Psalms 139:11 (ASV)

If I say ...—Rather,

I say only let darkness crush me,
And light become night around me.

Commentators have mostly been frightened by the metaphor in the first line, although it has been preserved by both the Septuagint and Vulgate. This metaphor can only be avoided by either forcing the meaning of the verb from what it has in Genesis 3:15, Job 9:17, or by altering the text.

Yet the Latins could speak, even in prose, of a region “oppressed by darkness” (Sen. Ep. 82); and when night was used figuratively for death, nocte premi was a common poetical figure.

Indeed, the word rendered darkness here is actually, in Psalms 88:6, used for death. If we understood this figure here, we might render the word as trample, illustrating with Horace:

“Jam te premet nox fabulæque Manes.”

Such a view would suit the thought to which the poet immediately passes—that to God, the darkness of death and the nothingness before birth are alike.

On the other hand, as the main thought is that nowhere is there escape from God’s sight—in height, depth, or distance—so, to exhaust the possibilities, we seem to need darkness.

The second clause does not begin the apodosis: it is in synthetic parallelism with the first.