For some of you, you may have heard her mother say, when she was trying to get you to take a bath, or a preacher when he was emphasizing how we should live a holy life: “The Bible says, ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’.” Well, that is not in the Bible.

Some have attributed it to Benjamin Franklin, others note that is was used by Francis Bacon who wrote: “Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God,”¹ and we find it in one of John Wesley’s sermons where he said: “Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness.”² But most scholars believe it came from the Jewish Babylonian Talmud, in the third division, tractate Abodah Zarah which means: ‘Strange Worship.”

Here the Rabbis were talking about the value of studying God’s Word and were commenting on Deuteronomy 23:9. They offered this conclusion: “These words mean that one should not indulge in such thoughts by day as might lead to uncleanliness by night.” Then they quote Rabbi Phineas ben Jair who said: “Study leads to precision, precision leads to zeal, zeal leads to cleanliness, cleanliness leads to restraint, restraint leads to purity, purity leads to holiness, holiness leads to meekness, meekness leads to fear of sin, fear of sin leads to saintliness, saintliness leads to the [possession of] the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit leads to life eternal.” Hebrew scholars tell us that the phrase “purity leads to holiness” can also be expressed as “cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

It is obvious that Rabbi Jair is not speaking here of bodily cleanliness, but spiritual, moral, and ethical cleanliness. Nevertheless, we all know that a person who is clean on the inside will most likely be clean on the outside, and that does not simply apply to soap and water, but to dress, appearance, comeliness and appearance. In other words, get the Word on the inside and it will lead to changing the cover on the outside.