Job 14:4

Who can bring a clean thing out of an clean?....

Who can bring a clean thing - This verse is thus rendered by the Chaldee: “Who will produce a clean thing from man, who is polluted with sins, except God, who is one?” By Coverdale thus: Who can make it cleane, that commeth of an uncleane thinge? No body. The text refers to man’s original and corrupt nature. Every man that is born into the world comes into it in a corrupt or sinful state. This is called original sin; and is derived from fallen Adam, who is the stock, to the utmost ramifications of the human family.

JOB considered himself to be unclean in the sight of God. Yet, if we speak the plain truth about him, we must say that he was as clean as any man who lived in that age, or, indeed, in any other! We have the witness of the Holy Spirit, in this very Book, that Job, "was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil."

The doctrine of original sin was held from the first. "Man is unclean from his birth, how then can God expect perfect cleanness from such a one and deal so severely with me?"

JOB considered himself to be unclean in the sight of God. Yet, if we speak the plain truth about him, we must say that he was as clean as any man who lived in that age, or, indeed, in any other! We have the witness of the Holy Spirit, in this very Book, that Job, "was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil." We have also the practical confirmation by the devil of the same fact, for, when the Lord said to him, "Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that fears God, and eschews evil?" he could not deny it, but could only insinuate that there was an evil motive at the back of the Patriarch's uprightness—"Does Job fear God for nothing?" Sometimes the unwilling acknowledgment of an enemy is a stronger proof than the hearty declaration of a friend—and it was so in Job's case. He was one of the best, truest, sincerest, cleanest men to be found throughout the whole world, yet he called himself unclean and he probably did so because, just in proportion as a man becomes really pure, he discovers his own impurity. The impure man has a very low standard of what true holiness is, and possibly he thinks that he comes nearly up to it or, if not, he tries to lower the standard down to his own level. But the man who is really pure in heart has a very high ideal of what the Truth of God is, and uprightness is, and holiness is and, because his ideal is so high, he feels that he has not yet attained to it and he thinks more of the distance between his present condition and his idea of perfection than he does of all that he has as yet attained.

Who can bring a clean - thing “out of an unclean?” This is evidently a proverb or an adage; but its connection here is not very apparent. Probably, however, it is designed as a plea of mitigation for his conscious frailties and infirmities. He could not but admit that he had faults. But he asks, how could it be expected to be otherwise? He belonged to a race that was sinful and depraved. Connected with such a race, how could it be otherwise than that he should be prone to evil? Why then did God follow him with so much severity, and hold him with a grasp so close and so unrelenting? Why did he treat him as if he ought to be expected to be perfectly pure, or as if it were reasonable to suppose he would be otherwise than unholy? This passage is of great value as showing the early opinion of the world in regard to the native character of man. The sentiment was undoubtedly common - so common as to have passed into a proverb - that man was a sinner; and that it could not be expected that anyone of the race should be pure and holy. The sentiment is as true as it is obvious - like will beget like all over the world. The nature of the lion, the tiger, the hyaena, the serpent is propagated, and so the same thing is true of man. It is a great law, that the offspring will resemble the parentage; and as the offspring of the lion is not a lamb but a young lion; of a wolf is not a kid but a young wolf, so the offspring of man is not an angel, but is a man with the same nature, the same moral character, the same proneness to evil with the parent. The Chaldee renders this: “Who will give one pure from a man polluted in sin, except God, who is one, and who forgiveth him?” But this is manifestly a departure from the sense of the passage. Jerome, however, has adopted nearly the same translation. […]