Pure (in a physical, chemical, ceremonial or moral sense)
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H2889, ṭāhôr, is a Hebrew adjective for what is clean or pure within a defined relation. It describes clean animals, people in a ceremonially eligible state, a person pronounced clean after examination, water used in cleansing imagery, pure gold, pure offerings, words or thoughts called pure, and a clean heart sought from God.
Reader summary
Full entry for טָהוֹר (H2889) · Open the biblical lexicon
H2889, ṭāhôr, is a Hebrew adjective for what is clean or pure within a defined relation. It describes clean animals, people in a ceremonially eligible state, a person pronounced clean after examination, water used in cleansing imagery, pure gold, pure offerings, words or thoughts called pure, and a clean heart sought from God.
The BSB source-word alignment has 94 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include clean (12), of pure (11), with pure (6), is clean (5), out of pure (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 7:2. Its strongest book concentrations include Exodus (28), Leviticus (21), Numbers (8), Deuteronomy (6).
H2889, ṭāhôr, is a Hebrew adjective for what is clean or pure within a defined relation. It describes clean animals, people in a ceremonially eligible state, a person pronounced clean after examination, water used in cleansing imagery, pure gold, pure offerings, words or thoughts called pure, and a clean heart sought from God. The adjective therefore crosses ritual, bodily, dietary, material, liturgical, and moral settings. It does not make those settings interchangeable, and clean never means one vague grade of personal worth.
Leviticus and Numbers give priests and communities a responsibility to distinguish clean from unclean so that worship, food, bodies, disease examination, and holy space are handled according to covenant instruction. Ritual cleanness is often a status that can change through time, washing, examination, sacrifice, or restored eligibility. A ceremonially unclean person is not thereby a wicked or lesser person. Deuteronomy even allows both clean and unclean people to eat ordinary meat in a non-sacrificial setting. Exodus applies the adjective to gold used for sanctuary furniture, showing that material purity is another distinct sense.
Psalms, Proverbs, Ezekiel, and Malachi extend purity language toward worship, speech, thought, allegiance, and God's renewing work. Psalm 51 asks God to create a clean heart after confessed sin, while Ezekiel 36 joins clean water with cleansing from idols and the gift of a new heart and spirit. This moral and theological development must not be projected backward into every bodily or ritual status. Pastoral teaching should preserve Jewish covenant context, reject shame attached to illness or ordinary bodily processes, and ask what kind of cleanness the passage names, who authorizes it, and how restoration occurs.
H2889 names clean animals, pure sanctuary materials, ritual eligibility, examined skin conditions, ordinary food access, priestly discernment, pure worship, moral speech, and God's creation of a clean heart.
You are to take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate; a pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate;
The clean and not-clean animal distinction appears before Sinai in the flood narrative and shapes Noah's later offering. It classifies animals for a covenantal purpose, not moral character in the creatures.
Overlay it with pure gold both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it.
Here purity describes gold selected for the ark. Material quality belongs to the craftsmanship of holy space and is distinct from bodily, dietary, or moral purity.
You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean,
Priests are charged to teach and maintain distinctions after Nadab and Abihu's failure. Holy/common and clean/unclean are related axes of covenant order, not simple synonyms for good people and bad people.
You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between animals that may be eaten and those that may not.’”
The chapter's conclusion makes dietary discernment explicit for Israel. The categories form covenant practice and should not be mocked as primitive hygiene or used to disparage Jewish observance.
The priest shall examine him, and if the disease has covered his entire body, he is to pronounce the infected person clean. Since it has all turned white, he is clean.
A priestly examination determines status under the skin-disease instructions. The surprising verdict shows that ritual classification is not identical with modern diagnosis or a visual scale of severity.
But if a man who is ceremonially clean and is not on a journey still fails to observe the Passover, he must be cut off from his people, because he did not present the Lord’s offering at its appointed time. That man will bear the consequences of his sin.
Cleanness creates eligibility and responsibility for Passover participation. The sin named is willful failure while eligible, not the existence of temporary ritual uncleanness.
But whenever you want, you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your gates, according to the blessing the Lord your God has given you. Both the ceremonially clean and unclean may eat it as they would a gazelle or deer,
Ordinary meat outside sacrificial use can be eaten by people in either ritual status. The verse prevents clean/unclean language from becoming a total social ranking.
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true, being altogether righteous.
Purity describes faithful reverence for the Lord within a poem celebrating God's instruction. The adjective now praises enduring integrity rather than ritual eligibility.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
David asks for divine re-creation after confessing sin. Moral purity is God's renewing gift and summons truthful repentance, not image management or shame imposed on another person.
Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.
Priestly failure destroys the distinctions they were appointed to teach. Ezekiel places purity discernment inside leadership accountability and the honoring of God's holiness.
I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.
Clean water becomes prophetic imagery for God's removal of idolatrous defilement before the promise of a new heart and Spirit. Ritual language serves moral and covenant renewal without erasing its earlier contexts.
For My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be presented in My name, because My name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Hosts.
Pure offerings are joined to the worldwide greatness of the Lord's name. The prophet contrasts honoring God with the blemished and contemptuous offerings condemned in the chapter.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Ritual purity prerequisite for covenant participation; literal cleanliness becomes metaphor for moral and spiritual fitness before God
Ritual purity prerequisite for covenant participation; literal cleanliness becomes metaphor for moral and spiritual fitness before God
pure (in a physical, chemical, ceremonial or moral sense) BDB: clean Usage: clean, fair, pure(-ness).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 5 selected witnesses from 94 lexical occurrence verses.
טָהוֹר is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H2889 is relationally precise. Gold is pure for sanctuary craftsmanship; animals are clean within Israel's food and sacrificial order; people can be ceremonially clean for Passover; a priest pronounces a skin condition clean after examination; and the psalmist asks God for a clean heart after sin. Deuteronomy 12 is crucial because both clean and unclean people may share ordinary meat, showing that ritual status is not a measure of human value.
Ezekiel condemns priests who abandon the distinctions entrusted to them, then promises that God will cleanse His people from idols and give a new heart and Spirit. Faithful teaching respects these movements, refuses anti-Jewish ridicule, protects bodies from shame, and presents moral purity as truthful allegiance renewed by God rather than a badge for controlling others.
Lev.10.10
H2889 is an adjective attested in masculine and feminine, singular and plural forms. The reviewed lemma transliteration is ṭāhôr; inflected forms shift their vowels in construct or plural settings. English clean and pure overlap but often signal different domains: ritual status, material quality, dietary classification, moral integrity, or worship acceptability. The adjective alone does not identify which domain governs an occurrence.
Jesus and the apostles address purity disputes within Israel's Scriptures and Jewish life, emphasizing the heart, God's cleansing work, table fellowship, and the inclusion of Gentiles through Christ. Acts 10 teaches Peter not to call any person common or unclean, and the New Testament speaks of cleansed consciences and holy lives. These developments should be traced canonically, not used to ridicule Torah or collapse ritual, moral, and social categories.