Deuteronomy 21:6-7

21:6 and all the elders of that city nearest the corpse ¹  must wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. ²  21:7 Then they must proclaim, “Our hands have not spilled this blood, nor have we ³  witnessed the crime. ⁴ 

Job 9:30-31

9:30 If I wash myself with snow water, ⁵ 

and make my hands clean with lye, ⁶ 

9:31 then you plunge me into a slimy pit ⁷ 

and my own clothes abhor me.

Psalms 26:6

26:6 I maintain a pure lifestyle, ⁸ 

so I can appear before your altar, ⁹  O Lord,

Jeremiah 2:27

2:27 They say to a wooden idol, ¹⁰  ‘You are my father.’

They say to a stone image, ‘You gave birth to me.’ ¹¹ 

Yes, they have turned away from me instead of turning to me. ¹² 

Yet when they are in trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’

Jeremiah 2:35

2:35 you say, ‘I have not done anything wrong,

so the Lord cannot really be angry with me any more.’

But, watch out! ¹³  I will bring down judgment on you

because you say, ‘I have not committed any sin.’

[21:6]  ¹ tn Heb “slain [one].”

[21:6]  ² tn Heb “wadi,” a seasonal watercourse through a valley.

[21:7]  ³ tn Heb “our eyes.” This is a figure of speech known as synecdoche in which the part (the eyes) is put for the whole (the entire person).

[21:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “seen”; the implied object (the crime committed) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[9:30]  ⁵ tn The Syriac and Targum Job read with the Qere “with water of [בְמֵי, bÿme] snow.” The Kethib simply has “in [בְמוֹ, bÿmo] snow.” In Ps 51:9 and Isa 1:18 snow forms a simile for purification. Some protest that snow water is not necessarily clean; but if fresh melting snow is meant, then the runoff would be very clear. The image would work well here. Nevertheless, others have followed the later Hebrew meaning for שֶׁלֶג (sheleg) – “soap” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT). Even though that makes a nice parallelism, it is uncertain whether that meaning was in use at the time this text was written.

[9:30]  ⁶ tn The word בֹּר (bor, “lye, potash”) does not refer to purity (Syriac, KJV, ASV), but refers to the ingredient used to make the hands pure or clean. It has the same meaning as בֹּרִית (borit), the alkali or soda made from the ashes of certain plants.

[9:31]  ⁷ tn The pointing in the MT gives the meaning “pit” or “ditch.” A number of expositors change the pointing to שֻׁחוֹת (shukhot) to obtain the equivalent of שֻׂחוֹת (sukhot) / סֻחוֹת (sukhot): “filth” (Isa 5:25). This would make the contrast vivid – Job has just washed with pure water and soap, and now God plunges him into filth. M. H. Pope argues convincingly that the word “pit” in the MT includes the idea of “filth,” making the emendation unnecessary (“The Word sahat in Job 9:31,” JBL 83 [1964]: 269-78).

[26:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “I wash my hands in innocence.” The psalmist uses an image from cultic ritual to picture his moral lifestyle. The imperfect verbal emphasizes that this is his habit.

[26:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “so I can go around your altar” (probably in ritual procession). Following the imperfect of the preceding line, the cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.

[2:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “wood…stone…”

[2:27]  ¹¹ sn The reference to wood and stone is, of course, a pejorative reference to idols made by human hands. See the next verse where reference is made to “the gods you have made.”

[2:27]  ¹² tn Heb “they have turned [their] backs to me, not [their] faces.”

[2:35]  ¹³ tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle often translated “behold” (הִנֵּה, hinneh) in a meaningful way in this context. See further the translator’s note on the word “really” in 1:6.