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the Lord, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple
of the Lord …” (2 Chron. 29:16).
Some rites required blood as the purifying agent: “And he shall sprinkle of the blood
upon it [the altar] with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the
uncleanness of the children of Israel” (Lev. 16:19). Sacrifices were offered to make
atonement for a mother after childbirth: “… she shall bring … the one for the burnt
offering, and the other for a sin offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for her,
and she shall be clean” (Lev. 12:8).
B. Adjective.
(
+
, 2889), “clean; pure.” The word denotes the absence of impurity,
filthiness, defilement, or imperfection. It is applied concretely to substances that are
genuine or unadulterated as well as describing an unstained condition of a spiritual or
ceremonial nature.
Gold is a material frequently said to be free of baser ingredients. Thus the ark of the
covenant, the incense altar, and the porch of the temple were “overlaid with pure gold”
(Exod. 25:11; 37:11, 26; 2 Chron. 3:4). Some of the furnishings and utensils in the
temple—such as the mercy seat, the lampstand, the dishes, pans, bowls, jars, snuffers,
trays—were of “pure gold” (Exod. 37:6, 16-24). The high priest’s vestment included
“two chains of pure gold” and “a plate of pure gold” (Exod. 28:14, 22, 36).
God demands that His people have spiritual and moral purity, unsullied by sin.
Anyone not clean of sin is subject to divine rejection and punishment. This contamination
is never outgrown or overcome. Because sin pollutes one generation after another, Job
asks: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” (Job 14:4). All outward
appearances to the contrary, it cannot be said that there is “one event … to the clean, and
to the unclean” (Eccl. 9:2). Hope is available even to the chief of sinners, because any
man can entreat the mercy of God and say: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and
renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10).
In sharp contrast with mankind’s polluted nature and actions, “the words of the Lord
are pure words …” (Ps. 12:6). The Lord is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Hab.
1:13).
“Clean” most frequently describes the purity maintained by avoiding contact with
other human beings, abstaining from eating animals, and using things that are declared
ceremonially clean. Conversely, cleansing results if ritual procedures symbolizing the
removal of contamination are observed.
The people of the old covenant were told that “he that toucheth the dead body of any
man shall be unclean seven days” (Num. 19:11). A priest was not to defile himself “for
the dead among his people” except “for his kin, that is near unto him” (Lev. 21:1-2). This
relaxation of the rule was even denied the high priest and a Nazarite during “all the days
that he separateth himself unto the Lord” (Num. 6:6ff.).
Cleansing rituals emphasized the fact that the people were conceived and born in sin.
Though conception and birth were not branded immoral (just as dying itself was not
sinful), a woman who had borne a child remained unclean until she submitted to the
proper purification rites (Lev. 12). Chapter 15 of Leviticus prescribes ceremonial
cleansing for a woman having her menstrual flow, for a man having seminal emissions,
and for “the woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation” (Lev. 15:18).