Deuteronomy 10:18

10:18 who justly treats ¹  the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing.

Deuteronomy 24:17

24:17 You must not pervert justice due a resident foreigner or an orphan, or take a widow’s garment as security for a loan.

Deuteronomy 27:19

27:19 ‘Cursed is the one who perverts justice for the resident foreigner, the orphan, and the widow.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’

Psalms 94:6-7

94:6 They kill the widow and the one residing outside his native land,

and they murder the fatherless. ² 

94:7 Then they say, “The Lord does not see this;

the God of Jacob does not take notice of it.” ³ 

Isaiah 1:17

1:17 Learn to do what is right!

Promote justice!

Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! ⁴ 

Take up the cause of the orphan!

Defend the rights of the widow! ⁵ 

Isaiah 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ⁶ 

they associate with ⁷  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ⁸  payoffs. ⁹ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ¹⁰ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ¹¹ 

Isaiah 10:2

10:2 to keep the poor from getting fair treatment,

and to deprive ¹²  the oppressed among my people of justice,

so they can steal what widows own,

and loot what belongs to orphans. ¹³ 

Ezekiel 22:7

22:7 They have treated father and mother with contempt ¹⁴  within you; they have oppressed the foreigner among you; they have wronged the orphan and the widow ¹⁵  within you.

Zechariah 7:10

7:10 You must not oppress the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, or the poor, nor should anyone secretly plot evil against his fellow human being.’

James 1:27

1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before ¹⁶  God the Father ¹⁷  is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

[10:18]  ¹ tn Or “who executes justice for” (so NAB, NRSV); NLT “gives justice to.”

[94:6]  ² tn The Hebrew noun יָתוֹם (yatom) refers to one who has lost his father (not necessarily his mother, see Ps 109:9). Because they were so vulnerable and were frequently exploited, fatherless children are often mentioned as epitomizing the oppressed (see Pss 10:14; 68:5; 82:3; 146:9; as well as Job 6:27; 22:9; 24:3, 9; 29:12; 31:17, 21).

[94:7]  ³ tn Heb “does not understand.”

[1:17]  ⁴ tn The precise meaning of this line is uncertain. The translation assumes an emendation of חָמוֹץ (khamots, “oppressor [?]”) to חָמוּץ (khamuts, “oppressed”), a passive participle from II חָמַץ (khamats, “oppress”; HALOT 329 s.v. II חמץ) and takes the verb II אָשַׁר (’ashar) in the sense of “make happy” (the delocutive Piel, meaning “call/pronounce happy,” is metonymic here, referring to actually effecting happiness). The parallelism favors this interpretation, for the next two lines speak of positive actions on behalf of the destitute. The other option is to retain the MT pointing and translate, “set right the oppressor,” but the nuance “set right” is not clearly attested elsewhere for the verb I אשׁר. This verb does appear as a participle in Isa 3:12 and 9:16 with the meaning “to lead or guide.” If it can mean to “lead” or “rebuke/redirect” in this verse, the prophet could be contrasting this appeal for societal reformation (v. 17c) with a command to reorder their personal lives (v. 17a-b). J. A. Motyer (The Prophecy of Isaiah, 47) suggests that these three statements (v. 17a-c) provide “the contrast between the two ends of imperfect society, the oppressor and the needy, the one inflicting and the other suffering the hurt. Isaiah looks for a transformed society wherever it needs transforming.”

[1:17]  ⁵ tn This word refers to a woman who has lost her husband, by death or divorce. The orphan and widow are often mentioned in the OT as epitomizing the helpless and impoverished who have been left without the necessities of life due to the loss of a family provider.

[1:23]  ⁶ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁹ sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).

[1:23]  ¹⁰ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ¹¹ sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.

[10:2]  ¹² tn Or “rob” (ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV); KJV “take away the right from the poor.”

[10:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “so that widows are their plunder, and they can loot orphans.”

[22:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “treated lightly, cursed.”

[22:7]  ¹⁵ tn Widows and orphans are often coupled together in the OT (Deut 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:19-21; 26:12-13; Jer 7:6; 22:3). They represented all who were poor and vulnerable to economic exploitation.

[1:27]  ¹⁶ tn Or “in the sight of”; Grk “with.”

[1:27]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “the God and Father.”