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Grotius (1583-1645) was a leading Remonstrant jurist and biblical commentator.
His annotations on Scripture, running into several volumes, were influential
throughout the seventeenth century and beyond. Grotius says that Psalm 51:5 is
hyperbole, and means “not only now, but also form my childhood I have often
sinned.” This is demonstrated, he says, by comparing Psalm 51 to the idiom seen
in Job 31:18 (“from my mother’s womb I guided the widow”), Psalm 22:10 (“On you
was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God”),
Psalm 58:3 (“The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth,
speaking lies”), as well as Psalm 71:5-6 and Isaiah 48:8. However, Psalm 51:5
does not actually use any of the Hebrew words מִבֶּטֶן or מֵרָחֶם or מִמְּעֵי (from
the womb or belly) which are used in these supposed parallels. Even in the
Latin Vulgate, the terminology is different (the parallels Grotius adduces use ab
infanta, de utero, de ventre, a vulva, or a
juventute), whereas Psalm 51:5 (50:7 in the Vulgate) has “Ecce enim in
intiquitatibus conceptus sum, et in peccatis concepit me mater
mea” (with the same Latin verb being used for the two different Hebrew words חוֹלָלְתִּי
and יֶחֶמֵתְנִי). So Grotius avoids seeing here a confession of original sin,
or a biblical testimony to that idea, as he also does with Genesis 8:21 (similarly
dismissed as hyperbole, with cross-references again to the same verses in Ps.
58, Ps. 71, Isa. 48, and Job 31). He interprets it simply as the psalmist remembering
less serious actual sins from his youth as well as his more recent grave
crime. The basis on which Grotius does so, however, does not seem to be as
sound as he conceives it to be. (Lee Gatiss, “Sin and the Synod of Dort,” in Ruined
Sinners to Reclaim: Sin and Depravity in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and
Pastoral Perspective, ed. David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson [The Doctrines
of Grace Series; Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2024], 186-87)
