in transgression was I
conceived, / and in offense my mother spawned me. Christian interpreters
through the ages have understood this verse as a prime expression of the
doctrine of Original Sin. Some of the early rabbis register a similar notion—as
they put it, David’s father, Jesse, did not have relations with his wife to fulfill
a higher obligation but rather out of sheer lust. Such a reading may be
encouraged by the fact that the verb attached to the mother, yaḥam, is
typically associated with animals in heat. It may, however, be unwarranted to
construct a general theology of sinful human nature from this verse. The
speaker of this poem certainly feels permeated with sinfulness. He may indeed
trace it back to the sexual act through which he was conceived, but there is
not much here to support the idea that this is the case of every human born.
(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2019], 3:133, emphasis in bold added)
