Known, searched, and unable to flee divine presence: Creaturely formation and uncountable thoughts

Formation in the womb is the start of the same knowing, spoken in the first person

For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

For ties this stanza to the last: presence reaches even the dark because it reached the speaker's making. Reins are the inward parts. Covered in the womb, embroidered in secret, lowest parts of the earth as a figure for the hidden womb—the language is the speaker's own creatureliness. I am fearfully and wonderfully made is praise from inside a body already alive, not a detached tract.

Unfinished substance, a book, and thoughts past counting—then the psalm is still not finished

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

Unperfect is unformed substance. The book and the days or members written are poetry of being known before appearance, not a modern medical file. Precious thoughts and sand-countless sum return the theme: the speaker is held in a knowing too large. When I awake, I am still with thee brings the night of the last stanza into morning. The psalm's movement is known, inescapable, formed, then—next—enemies and a plea to be searched. Using the womb lines as isolated fetal-policy proof-texting ignores that movement, ignores the first-person praise, and ignores the turn toward self-examination. The poem does say prenatal making is God's work. It does not hand you a statute, and it does not stop at verse 18.