Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
Parallel translations
- WEB Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
- BSB Who can bring out clean from unclean? No one!
- NKJV Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one!
- NASB “Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one!
- NLT Who can bring purity out of an impure person? No one!
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Job acknowledges no one can produce purity from impurity. Human beings are born unclean and cannot cleanse themselves.
Overview
Job's rhetorical question, 'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one,' confesses humanity's inborn corruption. No person can make himself clean before a holy God. This points directly to the gospel's answer: only God, through the cleansing work of Christ, can make sinners pure, doing what no human effort can achieve.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- John 3:6That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
- Job 15:14What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
- Eph 2:3Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
- Rom 8:8–9So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
- Ps 51:5Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
- Job 25:4–6How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?
- Luke 1:35And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
- Rom 5:12Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
- Ps 90:5Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
- Gen 5:3And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 14:4 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.