If I should wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye,If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;If I wash myself with snow water, And make my hands never so clean;
3 sermons cite this verse
… face and wear a smile. I am afraid of all my sufferings. I know that you will not hold me innocent if I am condemned. Why then do I labor in vain? I wash myself with snow water. If I wash myself with snow water, that was an ancient ritual. Snow water was the purest kind. It was believed so. it's cold, but they think effective, and cleanse my hands with soap, literally lye, yet you will plunge me into the pit, that is, I can't make myself clean no matter what ritual I perform, and my own clothes will abhor me. For he is not a man as I am, that I may answer him, and that we should go to court together, nor is there any mediator between us who may lay Did you notice what Job is crying out for? He's asking for a mediator between God and himself. somebody who would lay his hand on God and Job. The old King James says, a daysman, the new King James, a mediator. …
"If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands ever so clean; yet shall You plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me." Job 9:30,31. [Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on the same text is #1908, Volume 32—WASHED TO GREATER FOULNESS.] WE are all, by nature and by practice, unclean in the sight of God. However excellent or virtuous we may seem before man, we have all broken God's Law, for that Law requires perfection and we have been far from it. The Law demands spotless holiness towards God and perfect rectitude towards man and, in some point or other, we have all transgressed that Law—and we have therefore become polluted before the thrice-holy Jehovah. The great question which ought to arise in the mind of every one of us is this—"How can I be cleansed before God?" I. We are called upon to remember, first, that TO BE CLEAN IN THE SIGHT OF GOD IS WORTH EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT. Job speaks of washing himself with snow water and trying to make himself clean. And this he speaks of right earnestly. However far from the hot plains in which he lived, Job might have to send for snowy water—whatever quantity of soap (for in the Hebrew there is an allusion to soap in the second clause)—however much nitre and soap he might have to take in order to wash himself perfectly clean, it was worth all the expense and trouble if only it could be accomplished. …
Men have had the strangest notions as to how they might be cleansed from sin. Read John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners—which is, as you know, a record of his own experience—and you will see some very curious ideas of his concerning the way in which he hoped to wash himself from sin. Yet, his ideas are not any more curious than those of people who are now living. The other day I read a letter from a young farm laborer, describing the way in which, at one time, he hoped to get saved. He said that in the village where he lived, there were some young men who went to the Patagonian Mission and there got what he called, "massacreated." Of course, he meant to say that they were massacred. And he further wrote, "I thought that if the Patagonian Mission would have taken me and the natives would only have killed me, I would have gone joyfully and gladly, for I heard that they were all saints who died in that way and I would willingly have gone if I could have got to Heaven by that method." Yes, and so would I, and so would most of us when we were under the burden of sin. We would not have minded being killed and eaten if we might in that way have entered into eternal life, for a man who really feels the burden of sin is willing to try all sorts of extraordinary methods of getting rid of it! Look at the methods adopted by the heathen in order, as they hope, to get rid of sin. Go to India and look at the great car of Juggernaut, and see by what cruel means the people there hope to get rid of sin! And there are many other equally useless methods which the spiritual quacks are vainly puffing as unfailing ways of getting rid of sin! …