Lo, he goeth by me, and I see [him] not: he passeth on also, but I perceive him not.
Ver. 11. Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not] As he is powerful in his deeds, so he is secret in his designs, passing, and not repassing daily, but yet unseen; he is everywhere present, and not so far from any one of us as the bark is from the tree; for in him we live, move, and have our being; and therefore we had need take heed what we say or think of him in any extremity or misery, for he overheareth us; yea, he knoweth our thoughts long before, Psalms 139:2. As a circumspect judge that goeth obscured under some disguise, to hear and see what is said and done by those that are to be judged by him. Or, as the Great Turk standing behind the arras, at the dangerous door, to hear all the debates and decrees of his senate, and to call them to a strict account of all afterwards: God, as he is invisible, too subtle for sinew or sight to seize upon; so he is ολοφθαλμος, All-eye, to survey and look all around us; yea, to see through us: "The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven"; howbeit, he is not so confined or shut up there (as the Epicures dreamed) but that "his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men," Psalms 11:4. The one points out his knowledge, the other his judgment, or his eritical descant; he pryeth into the very entrails of the soul, the heart of the heart; the reins, those seats of lust, and most abstruse parts of the body. No man needs a window in his breast (as the heathen Momus wished) for God to look in at; every man before God is all window, and he, like the optic virtue in the eye, seeth all, and is seen of none. Look to it, therefore, and walk exactly. Cave, spectat Care, Take heed, Care seeth you, was an ancient watchword among the Romans, and a great retentive from vice; how much more should this among all men, Take heed, the Lord looks on! What though he is invisible, and we see him not; he passeth on also, and we perceive him not; shall we, like the foolish bustard, thrust our heads in a hole, and then think that, because we see none, we are therefore seen of none? The whole world is to God as a sea of glass, clear and transparent, Revelation 4:6, and his eyes are as a flaming fire, Revelation 1:14, that need no outward light, but can see by sending out a ray. God, that fills and sees all (saith Nazianzen), though he lighten the mind, yet flies before the beams thereof, still leaving it as it is able in sight to follow him; and so draws it by degrees to higher things; yet interposeth between it and his incomprehensible essence, as many veils as were over the Tabernacle.