Psalms 139:16 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Thine eyes did see my substance, &c.— Or, Thine eyes did see my rude mass; and on thy books were all written, as they were daily fashioned, when, &c. Before any of his limbs were in being, they were all written down, he says, in God's book, and the very days upon which they were afterwards actually formed. Some think that the allusion to embroidery is here carried on. "As the embroiderer hath still his book or pattern before him, to which he always recurs; so, by a method as exact, were all my members in continuance fashioned; i.e. from the rude embryo, or mass, they daily received some degree of figuration, 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: all those members lay open before God's eyes, they were discerned by him as clearly as if the plan of them had been drawn in a book, even to the least figuration of the body of the child."