Clean

Used here not in its ritual purity sense but to illustrate a broader principle: a spotless, frictionless environment sounds appealing but signals the absence of anything worth producing.

Clean is invoked here in a morally searching sense — Solomon's question in verse 9 asks who can genuinely claim a pure heart, turning the concept from ritual status into a test of honest self-examination.

Clean is used here in its everyday sense of elegance or simplicity — the observation in v. 20 is praised for being sharp and uncomplicated, not as a reference to ritual purity.

A clean conscience appears here as the opening image of the chapter — contrasted with the anxious guilt that makes people flee imaginary pursuers, it represents the unshakable confidence of someone with nothing to hide.

Clean is invoked here in a moral rather than ritual sense — the chapter ends with a sharp divide between the righteous and the wicked, each finding the other's way of life an offense, with no neutral, comfortable middle ground.

Clean is used here in a moral and spiritual sense: if the heart (the source of all motivation and desire) is uncontaminated, then what flows outward into words, relationships, and decisions will be clean as well.

Clean is invoked here in its absence — the father makes clear there is no clean recovery from this path, countering any assumption that this kind of mistake is survivable or easily undone.

Clean appears in the chapter's final haunting question — 'how long before you are made clean?' — where the word choice implies cleansing is still possible, just not self-administered, leaving a crack of hope in the verdict.

Clean is invoked negatively here — God's point is precisely that Judah's sin cannot be wiped clean, contrasting the possibility of ritual purification with the permanence of heart-level corruption.

Clean is used here to make the pastoral point that God does not require emotional tidiness before one comes to him in prayer — Jeremiah's unfiltered anguish is held up as proof that honest darkness is more welcome than a polished performance.

Clean is invoked here to note that Scripture refuses to sanitize Jeremiah's despair — the text preserves his wish never to have been born exactly as spoken.

Clean is notably absent here as a prerequisite — God's call to return came before any moral cleanup, demonstrating that his invitation precedes and enables repentance rather than waiting for the people to earn their way back.

"Clean" appears here in the commentary's contrast between a clean exit and the hard choice of staying — the word captures the appeal of Egypt as a tidy solution, a fresh start free of the mess and danger of remaining in Judah.

Clean is invoked here in the context of Asa's incomplete purge — the High Places remain, meaning the land isn't fully ritually cleansed, yet God still honors Asa's wholehearted direction.

Clean is used here to characterize Jotham's overall moral and covenantal record — the chronicler's assessment that he did right in the Lord's eyes sets him apart from the majority of Judah's kings.

Clean is used here in Oded's rhetorical challenge — he's pointing out that the northern army is hardly ritually or morally pure themselves, so they have no standing to pile more sin onto their record.

Clean marks the completion of the sixteen-day purification effort — the Temple has been fully restored to ritual purity and is now ready to function again as God's house of worship.

Ritual cleanness is invoked here in Hezekiah's letter as a barrier the people should not let stop them — the letter's appeal to simply return to God anticipates the grace-filled exception God will grant later in the chapter.

Clean here carries the sense of a decisive, uncompromised break — the author mourns that no generation ever made a clean severance from the idolatrous patterns inherited from those before them.

Clean is the declared status of Jericho's spring after Elisha's miracle — the water that brought death and miscarriage is now permanently purified and fit for life.

Clean is used here to describe Josiah's future purification of the Temple — the ritual and moral restoration that will undo Manasseh's desecration, restoring the sacred space to its proper purpose.

Clean appears here in the framing commentary, signaling that even God's miraculous intervention won't produce a tidy resolution — the chapter ends in moral and spiritual ambiguity.

Clean is the declared outcome of Elisha's instruction — the servants echo his exact words ('wash and be clean') to remind Naaman that ritual purity and physical restoration are both on offer if he'll simply comply.

Clean is used here in the context of God's promise to sprinkle pure water on His people — a ritual purification imagery that signals the complete removal of the spiritual defilement caused by their idolatry and sin.

Ritual cleanliness is at stake here in the command to cook over human dung — this detail signals the total collapse of the sacred order that defined Israelite identity and the degradation awaiting the besieged population.

Clean is used here to describe the squared, precise doorposts of the nave — the architectural cleanliness of perfectly cut lines reflecting the ritual purity required of everything associated with this sacred space.

Clean is one half of the foundational distinction Priests are mandated to teach — identifying who and what is in a state of ritual purity and therefore permitted to participate in God's presence.

Clean here refers to the ritual purity of the Temple itself, which must be ceremonially restored at the start of each year so the sanctuary remains a fit dwelling place for God's presence.

Clean is used here to describe the victory Jephthah could have had — an uncomplicated triumph that the Spirit of God was already providing, which the unnecessary vow complicated beyond repair.

Clean is invoked here in a theological reflection on God's methods — the chapter closes noting that God doesn't require pure or clean motives from human actors to accomplish his redemptive purposes.

The term appears here to underscore that Samson's motives are anything but pure — his actions throughout this chapter are revenge-driven, not righteously motivated, yet God works through them anyway.

Clean is invoked here to highlight the irony of Micah's confession — it comes from fear of a curse, not a genuinely clear conscience, exposing that his motivation is self-protection rather than moral purity.

The word 'clean' is used here to signal that this chapter offers no tidy resolution — the ending is morally and spiritually unresolved, with no ritual or narrative closure to mark the aftermath.

Clean is used here to contrast Nehemiah's posture — rather than presenting himself as morally uncontaminated and therefore qualified to fix others, he acknowledges his own share in the communal failure before God.

Clean is the ritual state the priests and Levites achieve through purification before the dedication — the text emphasizes that entering genuine celebration required consecration first, not rushing straight into the party.

The word signals that the chapter's victory is not entirely clean — the wall is up, but the moral and relational landscape inside Jerusalem remains complicated by betrayal and competing allegiances.

Ritual cleanness is at stake here for the Temple servants category — the passage raises the implicit question of whether these workers, whose genealogies are unverified, are eligible to participate in sacred Temple duties.

Clean is used here in a straightforward legal sense — when there is no prior warning about a dangerous animal, the owner is cleared of criminal liability, though the animal is still destroyed.

Clean is evoked visually through the courtyard's white linen walls — the text uses the image of brilliant white fabric standing out against the desert's dust and brown to picture ritual purity made visible.

The concept of a clean slate is what God is offering Moses — a fresh start, wiping out the unfaithful generation and beginning again, an offer Moses refuses in favor of intercession.

The concept of ritual cleanliness surfaces here by analogy — the text draws a parallel between spiritual commitments that fade when the crisis passes and the kind of moral reset people seek but don't sustain.

Clean is used here not in a ritual sense but as the goal of genuine repentance — God invites the sin-stained people to become 'white as snow,' a transformation only he can accomplish.

Ritual cleanliness is invoked here to show the order of restoration — people don't purify themselves first and then approach God; they hear his voice first, and the idols they throw away become 'unclean' in their eyes.

Clean is redefined here not as ritual performance but as character — the person who can stand before God is the one whose hands are clean because they refused to reach for bribes or exploit others.

Clean is the condition God requires of those leaving Babylon — the departing people, especially those carrying sacred vessels, must not bring ritual or moral impurity with them as they walk into restoration.

Clean is used here to describe a life that has been tidied up on the outside but left spiritually empty — the warning being that moral housekeeping without a new occupant invites worse trouble.

Clean is the ritual status the healed lepers needed priests to declare, restoring them to full participation in community and worship — all ten received this physical restoration, but only one returned to acknowledge the source.

Clean is invoked here to highlight what Jesus did not require — Zacchaeus was still living in a house built on stolen money when Jesus walked in, and transformation followed presence, not precondition.

Being clean is what the second criminal had no opportunity to become — he couldn't perform religious acts or purify himself, yet received full acceptance from Jesus anyway.

Clean status is the goal the purification ritual restores, but here it is paradoxically denied to those who administer the remedy — the priest and the one who burns the heifer both become unclean in the process.

Clean is used ironically here — the genealogy starts looking straightforward and orderly, but it doesn't stay ritually or narratively clean once the deaths of Nadab and Abihu are introduced.

Clean is the goal of the entire post-battle protocol — the multi-day process of fire, water, and waiting exists specifically to restore the soldiers to a state where they can re-enter the community and stand before God without contamination.

Ritual cleanliness is the goal of the entire multi-step process described here — the Levites must be made pure before they can enter God's presence to serve.

Clean is the stated goal of the opened fountain — the text describes it as a way for the house of David and Jerusalem's people to become ritually and morally purified after their grieving acknowledgment of guilt.

Ritual cleanness is restored to Joshua here not through any purification rite he performed but by direct divine action — the clean turban and fresh robes are given, not earned.

Cleanness appears here as the end goal of the basket vision — wickedness must be physically removed from the land so the community God is restoring is genuinely purified, not just cosmetically repaired.

Clean hearts toward one another — not devising evil — is what God demands here, shifting the concept of purity from ritual status to the internal moral disposition people hold toward their neighbors.

The concept of ritual cleanliness is invoked here by its absence — Er's behavior was so evil in God's sight that he was put to death, signaling a moral and covenantal breach rather than mere ceremonial impurity.

Clean appears here as one of the Levites' listed duties — maintaining the ritual purity of the Temple's spaces — presented without hierarchy alongside baking, measuring, and leading worship.

Clean here describes the transition itself metaphorically — no coup, no civil war, no fratricidal violence among David's sons, just a peaceful and orderly transfer of power that the text presents as remarkable.

Clean is used here to capture the moral complexity of David's path to the throne — gaining new wives while his first marriage is nullified by Saul means his road forward is anything but morally tidy.

Clean here captures the completeness of what God did in reconciliation — not a partial cleansing or moral renovation, but a total reset, underscoring why Paul says 'new creation' rather than 'improved version.'

Clean is used here in the sense of moral and spiritual purity — Paul calls believers to purify themselves from contamination of body and spirit as a response to the promises already given to them.

Clean is invoked here not ritually but emotionally — the text notes there is no clean, uncomplicated feeling available to David as relief over Saul's death and grief over Jonathan's collide simultaneously.

Clean is used here in the sense of sanitizing or softening — the text pointedly does not clean up David's story, placing Uriah's name on the honor roll without commentary and trusting the reader to feel the weight.

Clean animals appear in the vision as part of a mixed sheet of creatures — but the point isn't food safety; God is using this category to challenge Peter's deeper assumptions about people.

Clean is referenced here as the kind of settled, obvious answer nobody has — the ritual purity framework that governed Jewish life doesn't map neatly onto Gentile converts, and the church doesn't yet know what to do with that.

Clean is used here in its ritual covenant sense — the suffering of the wise is described as a refining process that purifies them, restoring what persecution and pressure strip away.

Clean is invoked here to describe a life so morally spotless that political opponents were forced to criminalize Daniel's prayer life because they couldn't find any other vulnerability.

Clean is invoked here to signal that this chapter resists easy resolution — the situation is morally and ritually messy in ways that no simple ceremony can fix, setting up the painful process ahead.

Clean is used here to describe what restoration rarely is — the author uses it to acknowledge that rebuilding after devastation is a messy, emotionally complex process, not a tidy recovery.

Clean is implicitly challenged here — the author's invitation to come 'as you are' to the throne of grace subverts the assumption that one must achieve ritual or moral purity before approaching God, since grace is what cleanses.

Cleanliness is the contrast point here — the old rituals produced only external, ceremonial purity, while Christ's blood reaches inward to purify the conscience from guilt and dead works.

Clean here introduces the tension: what should have been a tidy, uncomplicated homecoming is flagged as anything but — the word sets up the irony of the crisis that's about to unfold.

Ritual cleanness is invoked here as part of the consecration command — God is signaling that the crossing isn't a logistical event but a sacred one, requiring the people to prepare themselves as they would for worship.

Clean is used here in a narrative sense — Mark does not clean up the disciples' embarrassing refusal to believe Mary Magdalene, preserving the historical record as it actually happened.

Clean appears here as the concept Jesus is actively dismantling — by declaring that nothing entering from outside can defile a person, he shifts the entire category from ritual status to the condition of the heart.

A clear conscience is invoked here to make a subtle but crucial point — being internally clean doesn't mean being declared righteous; only God's final judgment can do that.

Clean is used here not in its ritual purity sense but in a moral and volitional one — Paul calls Timothy to actively purge dishonorable patterns from his life so he becomes the kind of vessel God reaches for when important work needs doing.

Clean here carries an ironic edge — 'cleanness of teeth' is a dark idiom for having nothing to eat, reframing ritual purity language to describe the bitter reality of famine God sent to get Israel's attention.

Clean is used here in the colloquial sense of a solution that feels tidy and complete — the friends' gallows plan seems like it will wrap everything up neatly, though it will prove catastrophically wrong.

Clean is used here as the chapter's rhetorical signal for a crisp, uncluttered conclusion — Paul is drawing a sharp, unambiguous line after the complexity of the allegory.

Clean is what the consecrated meat cannot make adjacent food — illustrating that ritual purity doesn't spread outward, only inward contamination does.

Clean surfaces here to underscore what Israel is not — the text says Ephraim is 'completely contaminated,' the opposite of the ritual purity required to stand before God in worship.

The concept of being 'clean' surfaces here in contrast — God's response to a world walking away wasn't to wipe it clean through judgment but to offer rescue through the gift of his Son.

Clean is used here to describe what grief's arc is not — the text explicitly rejects the idea that finding hope resolves suffering neatly, insisting the emotional reality is messier and more honest than a tidy upward line.

Clean is used here in the context of God wiping the slate — the text notes that even in this judgment, only a third is destroyed, meaning God has not yet moved to total purification or final renewal.

Clean is affirmed here as Paul's final concession to the strong party — everything is indeed clean — but he immediately pivots to say that being technically correct changes nothing if it causes someone else to stumble.

Clean here refers to the nearer kinsman's initial perception of the deal — a straightforward land acquisition with no complications, before he learns about Ruth.

Clean is used here in a moral-spiritual sense — a pure inner orientation that allows a person to engage the world without corrupting it, contrasted with the defiled conscience that turns everything self-serving.