Proverbs 20:9

9. Made my heart clean Morally pure. This is an expression of human consciousness in respect to the impurity and imperfection of man. No man can claim either that he has never sinned, (has no sin, 1 John 1:8; 1 John 1:10,) or that he has by any work or deed of his own purified his heart and made himself clean. There were modes, temporary and unsatisfactory, of purification and pardon under the old dispensation, (see Numbers xix, and Hebrews 9:0,) but it remained for the gospel dispensation to declare that only the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1:7. A Christian may be assured, or conscious, not that he has made himself clean, but that, through the great atoning sacrifice, his sins are all washed away. By faith he is justified, sanctified. Comp. Job 14:14; Job 15:14; Psalms 51:5; Psalms 51:7; 1 Kings 8:46; Ecc 7:20 ; 1 John 1:10; 1 John 3:20; James 3:2. In the Septuagint the verses of the chapter are somewhat transposed; after Proverbs 20:9 come in Proverbs 20:20-22; then Proverbs 20:10-13; then Proverbs 20:23, and so regularly on to Proverbs 20:30.