Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 51:5

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me." — Psalms 51:5 (ASV)

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity - The object of this important verse is to express the deep sense David had of his depravity. That sense was derived from the fact that this was not a sudden thought, a mere outward act, or an offence committed under the influence of strong temptation, but that it was the result of an entire corruption of his nature—of a deep depravity of heart, running back to the very beginning of his being. The idea is that he could not have committed this offence unless he had been thoroughly corrupt, and always corrupt.

The sin was as heinous and aggravated as if in his very conception and birth there had been nothing but depravity. He looked at his sin, and he looked back to his own origin, and he inferred that the one demonstrated that in the other there was no good thing, no tendency to goodness, no germ of goodness, but that there was evil, and only evil; as when one looks at a tree and sees that it bears sour or poisonous fruit, he infers that it is in the very nature of the tree, and that there is nothing else in the tree, from its origin, but a tendency to produce just such fruit.

Of course, the idea here is not to cast reflections on the character of his mother, or to refer to her feelings in regard to his conception and birth, but the design is to express his deep sense of his own depravity; a depravity so deep as to demonstrate that it must have had its origin in the very beginning of his existence.

The word rendered I was shapen—חוללתי (chôlaletiy)—is from a word—חול (chûl)—which means properly, “to turn around, to twist, to whirl;” and then it comes to mean “to twist oneself with pain, to writhe;” and then it is used especially with reference to the pains of childbirth (Isaiah 13:8; Isaiah 23:4; Isaiah 26:18; Isaiah 66:7–8; Micah 4:10).

That is the meaning here. The idea is simply that he was born in iniquity; or that he was a sinner when he was born; or that his sin could be traced back to his very birth—as one might say that he was born with a love of music, or with a love of nature, or with a sanguine, a phlegmatic, or a melancholy temperament.

There is not in the Hebrew word any idea corresponding to the word shapen, as if he had been formed or moulded in that manner by divine power. Instead, the entire meaning of the word is exhausted by saying that his sin could be traced back to his very birth. It was so deep and aggravated that it could be accounted for—or that he could express his sense of it—in no other way than by saying that he was born a sinner.

How that occurred, or how it was connected with the first apostasy in Adam, or how the fact that he was born this way could be vindicated, is not intimated, nor is it alluded to. There is no statement that the sin of another was imputed to him, or that he was responsible for the sin of Adam, or that he was guilty on account of Adam’s sin, for on these points the psalmist makes no assertion.

It is worthy of remark, further, that the psalmist did not endeavor to excuse his guilt on the ground that he was born in iniquity; nor did he allude to that fact with any purpose of exculpating himself.

The fact that he was born this way only deepened his sense of his own guilt, or showed the enormity of the offence which was the regular result or outbreak of that early depravity. The points, therefore, which are established by this expression of the psalmist, so far as the language is designed to illustrate how human nature is conceived, are:

1. that people are born with a propensity to sin; and
2. that this fact does not excuse us in sin, but rather tends to aggravate and deepen our guilt.

The language goes no further than this in regard to the question of original sin or native depravity. The Septuagint agrees with this interpretation: ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἐν ἀνομίαις συνελήφθην (idou gar en anomiais sunelēphthēn). So the Vulgate: in iniquitatibus conceptus sum.

And in sin did my mother conceive me - Margin, as in Hebrew, warm me. This language simply traces his sin back to the time when he began to exist. The previous expression traced it to his birth; this expression goes back to the very beginning of life, when there were the first indications of life. The idea is, “as soon as I began to exist I was a sinner; or, I had then a propensity to sin—a propensity, the sad proof and result of which is that enormous act of guilt which I have committed.”