Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 139:16

My substance yet being unperfect. One word in the original, which means strictly anything rolled together as a ball, and hence is generally supposed to mean here the foetus or embryo. Hupfeld, however, prefers to understand it of the ball of life, as consisting of a number of different threads ("the days" of Ps 139:16 —see margin) which are first a compact mass as it were, and which are then unwound as life runs on. —J.J. Stewart Perowne.