Bible Strands
Job 14:4
Who can bring out clean from unclean? No one!
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job addresses God directly in a reflective monologue on human mortality, posing this question after noting God's scrutiny and judgment, and immediately before declaring that God has fixed the limits of his days.
The words — The Hebrew יִתֵּן (yi.Ten) translates as "will he make" or "will he bring out," operating on טָ֭הוֹר (Ta.hor) meaning "a clean [thing]" and מִ/טָּמֵ֗א (mi./ta.Me') meaning "from an unclean [thing]."
The thread — The text's assertion of human inability to produce purity surfaces again in Job 15:14 and finds a parallel in Romans 8:8 regarding those controlled by the flesh.
Why it lands — The verse states that no one can extract purity from impurity, establishing a baseline of human moral limitation. It requires the reader to recognize that self-generated righteousness is impossible and to submit to the divine standard that defines purity.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
Cross-references
- John 3:6 Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of the Spirit.
- Job 15:14 What is man, that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
- Romans 8:8 Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.
- Ephesians 2:3 All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.
- Job 25:4 How then can a man be just before God? How can one born of woman be pure?
- Psalms 51:5 Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
- Luke 1:35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.
- Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned.
- Psalms 90:5 You sweep them away in their sleep; they are like the new grass of the morning—
- Genesis 5:3 When Adam was 130 years old, he had a son in his own likeness, after his own image; and he named him Seth.