A few years ago, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups aired a series of commercials about the mythical beginnings of their product.  There were various incarnations, but the idea was generally the same:  a hapless chocolate lover collides with an ardent peanut butter lover.  They taste the chocolate and peanut butter together and a new taste sensation is discovered.

Psalm 139 always reminds me of those commercials.  It presents us with a collision of theological ideas, resulting in a potent, new idea.

Theological Proposition Number One:  God knows everything.  Verses 1-18 expound this idea and carry it to its logical conclusion.  God knows our waking and our sleeping, our every thought and deed.

Theological Proposition Number Two:  God hates sin, and so do I.  Verse 19-21 are bone jarring in their unveiled desire that God would do something about "those sinners" that are running around making life miserable for everybody else.  This brutal tirade is brief, but unambiguous.

Something happens "off camera" between verses 22 and 23.  One can imagine the poet coming up short in the middle of his lament about "those sinners" when he recognizes what has flowed from his own pen.  Theological Proposition Number One collides with Theological Proposition Number Two and something startling, even frightening, is born.

God knows everything about me.  Go hates sin.

How long did the author pause here, letting the implications of these two thoughts converse before he continued with verse 23?

"Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts;

And see if there is any wicked way in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting."