If I wash myself with snow water, And cleanse my hands with soap,
Parallel translations
- WEB If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
- KJV If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;
- BSB If I should wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye,
- NASB “If I washed myself with snow, And cleansed my hands with lye,
- NLT Even if I were to wash myself with soap and clean my hands with lye,
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
Even the most thorough self-cleansing cannot make Job acceptable before God. It pictures the impossibility of purifying oneself in God's sight.
Overview
Job imagines washing with snow and strong lye, the strongest cleansing he can name, yet anticipates it will not avail. He intuits that human righteousness cannot meet God's holiness, a theme Scripture develops in Jeremiah 2:22. Only the cleansing God supplies in Christ truly washes the conscience (1 John 1:7; Titus 3:5).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Jer 2:22For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me,” says the Lord Yahweh.
- Ps 26:6I will wash my hands in innocence, so I will go about your altar, Yahweh;
- 1 Jn 1:8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
- Jer 4:14Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?
- Isa 1:16–18Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil.
- Job 31:7if my step has turned out of the way, if my heart walked after my eyes, if any defilement has stuck to my hands,
- Rom 10:3For being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they didn’t subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
- Prov 28:13He who conceals his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
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 9:30 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.