INNOCENS, INNOCENT, INNOCENCY. The signification of this word is known sufficiently. The Hebrews made innocence to consist chiefly in an exemption from external faults committed contrary to the law; hence it is that they often join innocens with manibus: Innocens manibus & Pf. xxiii. 4. Gen. xxxvii. 22. Pf. xxvi. 6. Joseph.mundo corde. Manus vestras servate innocentes. I will wash my hands in innocency. And again Psalm lxxiii. 13. Then have I cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. Josephus acknowledges no other sins besides those which are put in execution. Sins in thought, in his account, are not punished by God.
To be innocent, is used sometimes for being exempt from punishment. I will not Jer. xlvi. 28. Jer. xlix. 12. נקח לא אנקרtreat you as one innocent: literally, I will not make thee innocent, I will chastise thee, but like a kind father. And in another place speaking to the Edomites, They who have not (so much) deserved to drink of the cup of my wrath, have tasted of it, et tu quasi innocens relinqueris? Non eris innocens, sed bibes. And Nahum, ch. i. ver. 3. Dominus mandans non faciet innocentiam. God is ready to exercise vengeance, he will make no one innocent: he will spare no one. And Moses Exod. xxxiv. 7. Nullus apud te per se innocens est. In the Hebrew. Thou shalt make no one innocent. No sin shall remain unpunished. Thou, O Lord, says the Pf. xvii. 25.Psalmist, cum viro innocente innocens eris. Thou treatest the just as just, the good as good; thou never doest confound the guilty with the innocent.
Job xxvii. 5. Job ii. 3, 9.Job being accused by his friends, declares that he will never renounce his innocency: Non recedam ab innocentia mea. I will suffer continually, and will not confess, that God punishes me for my sins. God tells Satan, that notwithstanding the evils which he had inflicted on him, he still retained his innocency. Adhuc retinens innocentiam. And Job’s wife insults him in these words, Adhuc permanes in simplicitate tua? or innocentia tua according to the Hebrew. Thou continuest as firmly attached to thy duty, as submissive to the will of God, as before thy misfortunes.