Behold, I was shapen... — Better, Behold, I was born in iniquity.
The later rabbis, combining this verse with the mystery hanging over the origin and name of David’s mother, represent him as born in adultery. (See Stanley, Jewish Church, chap. ii., p. 46, Note.) The word rendered conceived is certainly one generally used of animal desire. (The marginal warm me is erroneous.) But the verse is only a statement of the truth of experience so constantly affirmed in Scripture of hereditary corruption and the innate proneness to sin in every child of man. The argument for a personal origin to the psalm from this verse seems strong; but in Psalms 129:1, and frequently, the community is personified as an individual growing from youth to age, and so may here speak of its far-back idolatrous ancestry as the mother who conceived it in sin.