Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, &c.— Behold, I was born, &c. I do not find that the original word חוללתי cholalti, which we render shapen, does ever so signify. It unquestionably denotes to bring forth, as a woman does her child; and in all the places where it is rendered shapen, it would better bear another signification. The rendering in the place before us should be; Behold I was brought forth in iniquity; and then the ensuing words will contain the reason of it; because in sin did my mother conceive me. I was brought forth in iniquity. This refers to the Psalmist himself; to what he was from his birth, and his state as he came into the world. It was in sin; i.e. with great propensities and dispositions to sin; in a state of sensuality, with more irregular, and much stronger tendencies to animal and criminal indulgencies, and the gratification of those lusts which are dishonourable in themselves, and which, when gratified, are sinful in their nature, and highly offensive to God, than they would have been, if the parents themselves had been entirely free from them; and this, as opposed to rectitude of nature, and the regulation of our portions and appetites, in a depraved sinful state. And I should think that there is need of no other proof that we are all born in such a state, that our own experience, and the present condition of the world we live in. Nor do I see how it could be otherwise with the Psalmist, if what he says of his mother be true, that she conceived him in sin, or was herself a sinner, when she first cherished him in her womb. I shall not easily be persuaded to think, that parents, who are sinners themselves, and too much under the influence of bad affections and passions, will be very likely to produce children without transmitting to them some of those disorders and corruptions of nature with which they themselves are infected. And if this be a difficulty, I would beg leave to observe, that it is a difficulty which affects natural, as well as revealed religion: since we must take human nature as it is; and if it be really in a state of disorder and corruption, and cannot be otherwise, considering the common law of its productions, the difficulty must have been as ancient as the first man who was born; and therefore can be no objection against the truth of revelation, but it must be equally so against natural religion, which must equally allow the thing, if it be in reality a fact, with revelation itself. The sense therefore, as I apprehend, of the whole passage is, that 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. See 2 Chronicles 29:6. 2 Kings 22:13. Nehemiah 9:16 and elsewhere. So also Horace:
AEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem. Lib. 3: Obadiah 1:6.
More vicious than their fathers' age, Our fires begot the present race, Of actions impious, bold, and base; And yet, with crimes to us unknown, Our sons shall mark the coming age their own. FRANCIS.
I shall only farther observe, that David does not mention the circumstance of his being born of sinful parents, and born, as hath been explained, in sin himself, as an excuse for, but rather as an aggravation of his sins; since he ought to have been more upon his guard, and watched more carefully over his sensual passions and affections, as he knew his natural tendency to evil, and had been instructed by the law of God to correct and suppress it; as he more than intimates in the following verse. See Dr. Chandler; whose observations are here more immediately levelled at some remarks upon this text by Dr. Taylor, in his Doctrine of Original Sin, p. 31, &c.