Babies have value before they are born (4)

Psalm 139 contains 7 Hebrew words that teach us that babies have value before they are born. Here are words four and five.

Before we are born, God shapes us.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret…
Psalm 139:15a

We can pray, “You watched my bones grow while my body took shape, hidden in my mother's body.”

This is a different Hebrew word for “made” than the word in verse 14. It is ‘asa. This word means that God is taking the material that has been created in order “to fashion” or “to shape” it. So, the idea seems to be that God is actively shaping us in the womb. (TWOT - #1708)

Just google an image of a child in the womb at eight weeks old, when the earliest abortions take place. It won't look like a blob of tissue, does it? There is a measurable heartbeat twenty-one days after conception and measurable brainwaves at forty-nine days after conception. That means that every surgical abortion stops a beating heart and stops brain waves. (Randy Alcorn, A Sanctity of Life Message, www.epm.org.)

That’s taking a life. We have to let God finish what He’s shaping/making in secret.

Before we are born, God shapes us and He weaves us.

… intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Psalm 139:15b

“Depths of the earth” is a poetic expression for the darkness and secrecy of the womb.

The Hebrew word for “woven” is raqam. The word describes the weaving of a garment or needlework with many colors of threads. It literally means “to mix colors” or “to give variety to.” So, the idea seems to be that in the process of weaving us in the womb, God is creating an intricately beautiful and colorful work of art. (Gesenius’s Lexicon)

A skillful work of art is being described here. This same Hebrew word was used in Exodus 38:23 to describe what an artist in the Bible, Oholiab, did in weaving blue and purple and scarlet material together to make a fabric used in the Tabernacle, a portable place of worship that God’s people used in Old Testament days.

If you created a work of art in your home – a painting, a landscape, some pottery, a needlepoint – and someone came into your home or yard and destroyed it, you would feel violated. That’s the way God feels when someone invades a womb and desecrates His work of art – an unborn baby.