Thursday, May 23, 2024

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) on Psalm 51:5

  

Hugo 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)