When it is said
Psalm 139 is read in full at the start of the blessing of a plane. The blessing for people about to fly opens with it too.
Anyone may pray these six verses at any moment of a flight.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Who wrote it?
The Hebrew heading reads “A Psalm of David”. The Greek Psalter that the Orthodox Church prays counts it as Psalm 138, under a heading that names David too.
The rest of the psalm
The whole psalm is about how closely God knows the one who prays. He knows when they sit and when they rise (Psalm 139:1-2), and He knit them together in their mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). These six verses come between the two. They say there is nowhere a person can go where God is not.
What the words mean
The wings of the dawn
The Hebrew has “the wings of the dawn”. The Church Slavonic reads differently, and St Tikhon’s English of the blessing of a plane, made from it, says “If I take up my wings early in the morning”.
The Great Book of Needs, Volume III (St Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1999), page 65
The Scripture in it
Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me”— even the darkness is not dark to You, but the night shines like the day, for darkness is as light to You.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.