Who was born in sin? David or his infant?
Psalm 51 (LXX psalm 50) is very well-known. Orthodox priests recite it every Divine Liturgy, and in other services. Protestants and Catholics use it at Lent. Jews use it extensively in liturgy and in entirety in preparation for the Day of Atonement. The superscription in front of the psalm ascribes the occasion for the psalm after David was called out by Nathan the prophet over his adultery with Bathsheba, the murder (effectively) of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, and David’s deceit surrounding the whole sordid event. This is the psalm of the penitent sinner!
Arguably the most enigmatic verses in Psalm 51 (50 in the LXX) one finds in verses 7-8 (variously 5-6):
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. (RSV vs 5-6)
The first half of the second verse contains a word that appears only twice in the Hebrew bible (טחה – inward parts), and it has been translated variously as “innermost self”, “inward parts”, “internal organs”, “innermost being”, or sometimes just skipped! Of the second verse Robert Alter notes, “This whole verse is the one line in the poem that is rather obscure…It is unclear what the line as a whole means to say...” (The Hebrew Bible: Translation with Commentary, loc 78474) Taken together, these two verses have been described by Hossfeld and Zenger as “a parenthesis” (Psalms 2, p.13, note h.4). They are set apart from what comes before and after both by the thematic flow of the psalm and by the word “behold” (הן) that starts each verse. Something different is going on with this pair of verses.
I speculate that the author (let’s suppose King David) has given a voice to his infant son, who is either dead at this point or is soon to be dead. For the following reasons, I find this at least plausible.
Foremost, this understanding clears-up the question exposed by the first verse. Who was conceived in sin? This child conceived by the scandalous union between David and Bathsheba was the offspring of an adulterous act – an act surrounded by an abundance of other secret and not-so-secret sins. He, more than David, was the product of sin. Unlike those who speculate about David’s own mother, here we have clear testimony from other Hebrew texts that Bathsheba both conceived and bore this child in the context of Torah offenses. At a minimum these include false testimony, murder, adultery, and coveting. By contrast, those who contend that the author was talking about himself struggle to explain how it was so that he was conceived in sin, without falling back upon the notion of original sin.
Second, my speculation may elucidate the use of the introductory “Behold” (hen; הן), which is a common way for a speaker to preface a statement. In this context, it might serve to separate these lines from the parts of the psalm where the author himself is doing the narrating. That is, it helps to make these lines parenthetical. Why doesn’t David introduce the new speaker? One good reason would be that infants don’t speak. The argument here is not so much that David is quoting someone else as he is giving voice to what that other person might have said in this context if he were able to speak. He is musing about what could be going on inside the child’s mind, a musing that many parents will understand.
But is such an abrupt, un-introduced change in speaker attested elsewhere in Hebrew poetry? Most certainly, yes. Many places. In his recent article, “Whose Voice is Heard? Speaker Ambiguity in the Psalms” (CBQ 82, no. 2, 2020: 197-213), Samuel Hildebrandt examines several instances of this kind of change in 1st-person speaker/narrator, in the psalms and in prophetic poetry, particularly Jeremiah. In this paper, he examines psalms 32, 45, and 109 as case studies in speaker ambiguity.
I would add to Hildebrandt’s list Isaiah’s Suffering Servant psalm/song (52:12 – 53). In this Isaiah passage, there is no announcement of when the Lord is speaking versus Isaiah speaking, or when Isaiah is speaking about the servant versus directly addressing the Lord. There is some degree of ambiguity as a result. More examples could be cited.
Understanding these two verses in Psalm 51 as reflecting the words (or, perhaps better, thoughts) of David’s infant son, improves the understanding of the verses coming before and after them. Immediately before these lines, David declares that the Lord’s words are just (i.e., as delivered by Nathan the prophet), and his judgment is pure (i.e., the Lord’s sentence delivered by Nathan, “The son who was born to you will die.” – 2 Samuel 12:14). This strong contextual fit could be elaborated more fully, but for those readers who have forgotten the details, please read 2 Samuel chapter 12. This also lends historical credibility to the superscription where we are told, “When the prophet Nathan came to him after he had gone in to (into) Bathsheba.”
Further evidence that David’s infant is involved with these two verses comes several lines later in the psalm, after David has pleaded for cleansing and a new heart. We read,
“Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, the God of my salvation.” (v14, Brenton’s LXX).
Leviticus 20 and Numbers 35 make clear that the penalty for murder is death. Hossfeld and Zenger comment on this verse: “’Being saved from blood’ then means being saved from the power of threatened or impending death. Since nothing is said in this psalm about enemies, this can only be about the ‘death penalty’ with which the petitioner, because of his sins, is threatened by God, or the deadly wound inflicted on the human being by sin…” (p.13).
Possibly, but in the light of my proposal herein, we have another possibility: David is not concerned with his own life being taken (he is, after all, the king), but rather the life of his infant son. Is David pleading with God to spare the boy’s life? This is exactly what we are told David does in 2 Samuel 12:16:
David pleaded with God for the boy. He fasted and went into his house and spent the night lying in sackcloth on the ground. (NIV)
While the above points make a case for understanding the first “Behold” verse as relating to the baby, the second “Behold” verse is less clear. A fairly literal translation after the “Behold” reads:
You desire truth in inward things. And by means of hidden things, you teach me wisdom.
We have already pointed out the difficult vocabulary in this line. It is ambiguous in not only voice, but in meaning. Perhaps the second “Behold” switches the narration back to David, or perhaps it is still the child’s perspective being described. Whichever the case, both sides of this bi-colon are concerned with illuminating that which has been covered-up. The Hebrew root “inward things” (tooakh; טוח) means to plaster over, overlay, or besmear (i.e., hide). The saga of David and Bathsheba is rife with deception and cover-up. And thus, we have another element of fit with the traditional historical context. The infant was the product of actions done in secret and later covered-up. Truth and wisdom ultimately come to the surface (as does the fetus), whether it is David himself being taught the lesson, or the infant – or both. As Hildebrandt argues, the ambiguity in the psalms sometimes seems intentional.
To wrap this up, my suggestion here is speculative. However, it seems to me to be no more speculative than other attempts to understand what is implied or intended to be understood from these enigmatic lines within this beautiful biblical poem.