Thine eyes did see my substance Hebrews גלמי, my rude mass, as Dr. Waterland renders the word: massa rudis et intricata adhuc, says Buxtorf, neque in veram formam evoluta, a mass, yet rude and entangled, and not unfolded into proper form. When the matter, out of which I was made, was an unshapen embryo, without any form, it was visible to thee how every part, however minute, would be wrought; and in thy book all my members were written Before any of them were in being they lay open before thy eyes, and were discerned by thee as clearly as if the plan of them had been drawn in a book. Thy eternal wisdom formed the plan, and according to that, thy almighty power raised the structure. The allusion to the needlework seems to be still carried on. “As the embroiderer hath his book or pattern before him, to which he always recurs; so by a method as exact were all my members in continuance fashioned; and as from the rude skeins of silk, under the artificer's hands, there at length arises an unexpected beauty, and an accurate harmony of colours and proportions; so, by the skill of the divine workman, is a shapeless mass wrought into the most curious texture of parts, most skilfully interwoven and connected with each other, until it becomes a body harmoniously diversified with all the limbs and lineaments of a man, not one of which at first appeared, any more than the figures were to be seen in the ball of silk. But then, (which is the chief thing here insisted on by the psalmist,)
whereas the human artificer must have the clearest light, whereby to accomplish his task, the divine work-master seeth in secret, and effecteth all his wonders within the dark and narrow confines of the womb.” Horne.