Psalms 51:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity Hebrew, חוללתי, cholaleti, I was born, or brought forth: for it does not appear that the word ever signifies, I was shapen; and then the ensuing words will contain the reason of it; the sense being, because in sin did my mother conceive me, therefore I was brought forth in iniquity; that is, with great propensities and dispositions to sin. This verse is, both by Jewish and Christian, by ancient and later interpreters generally, and most justly, understood of what we call original sin; which David here mentions, not as an excuse for, but as an aggravation of, his transgression, inasmuch as the knowledge which he had of the total corruption of his nature, and its tendency to evil, ought to have made him more on his guard, and to have watched more carefully over his sensual passions and affections. And the sense of the place is this: Nor is this the only sin which I have reason to acknowledge and bewail before thee; for this filthy stream leads me to a corrupt fountain. And, upon a serious review of my heart and life, I find that I am guilty of innumerable other sins; and that this heinous crime, though drawn forth by external temptations, yet was indeed the proper fruit of my own vile nature, which, without the restraints of thy providence or grace, ever was and still will be inclinable and ready to commit ten thousand sins as occasion offers. Thus, as Dr. Dodd, after Chandler, justly observes, “The psalmist owns himself to be the corrupted, degenerate offspring, of corrupted, degenerate parents, agreeable to what was said long before he was born, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one, Job 14:4. Nor is it unusual with good men, when confessing their own sins before God, to make mention of the sins of their parents, for their greater mortification and humiliation.”