Deuteronomy 10:18

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

Deuteronomy 24:7

24:7 If a man is found kidnapping a person from among his fellow Israelites, ²  and regards him as mere property ³  and sells him, that kidnapper ⁴  must die. In this way you will purge ⁵  evil from among you.

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!’

Job 22:9

22:9 you sent widows away empty-handed,

and the arms ⁶  of the orphans you crushed. ⁷ 

Job 24:9

24:9 The fatherless child is snatched ⁸  from the breast, ⁹ 

the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. ¹⁰ 

Job 29:12

29:12 for I rescued the poor who cried out for help,

and the orphan who ¹¹  had no one to assist him;

Psalms 68:5

68:5 He is a father to the fatherless

and an advocate for widows. ¹² 

God rules from his holy palace. ¹³ 

Psalms 94:6

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

and they murder the fatherless. ¹⁴ 

Proverbs 23:10

23:10 Do not move an ancient boundary stone,

or take over ¹⁵  the fields of the fatherless,

Isaiah 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ¹⁶ 

they associate with ¹⁷  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ¹⁸  payoffs. ¹⁹ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ²⁰ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ²¹ 

Ezekiel 22:7

22:7 They have treated father and mother with contempt ²²  within you; they have oppressed the foreigner among you; they have wronged the orphan and the widow ²³  within you.

Malachi 3:5

3:5 “I ²⁴  will come to you in judgment. I will be quick to testify against those who practice divination, those who commit adultery, those who break promises, ²⁵  and those who exploit workers, widows, and orphans, ²⁶  who refuse to help ²⁷  the immigrant ²⁸  and in this way show they do not fear me,” says the Lord who rules over all.

James 1:27

1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before ²⁹  God the Father ³⁰  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.”

[24:7]  ² tn Heb “from his brothers, from the sons of Israel.” The terms “brothers” and “sons of Israel” are in apposition; the second defines the first more specifically.

[24:7]  ³ tn Or “and enslaves him.”

[24:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “that thief.”

[24:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “burn.” See note on the word “purge” in Deut 19:19.

[22:9]  ⁶ tn The “arms of the orphans” are their helps or rights on which they depended for support.

[22:9]  ⁷ tn The verb in the text is Pual: יְדֻכָּא (yÿdukka’, “was [were] crushed”). GKC 388 §121.b would explain “arms” as the complement of a passive imperfect. But if that is too difficult, then a change to Piel imperfect, second person, will solve the difficulty. In its favor is the parallelism, the use of the second person all throughout the section, and the reading in all the versions. The versions may have simply assumed the easier reading, however.

[24:9]  ⁸ tn The verb with no expressed subject is here again taken in the passive: “they snatch” becomes “[child] is snatched.”

[24:9]  ⁹ tn This word is usually defined as “violence; ruin.” But elsewhere it does mean “breast” (Isa 60:16; 66:11), and that is certainly what it means here.

[24:9]  ¹⁰ tc The MT has a very brief and strange reading: “they take as a pledge upon the poor.” This could be taken as “they take a pledge against the poor” (ESV). Kamphausen suggested that instead of עַל (’al, “against”) one should read עוּל (’ul, “suckling”). This is supported by the parallelism. “They take as pledge” is also made passive here.

[29:12]  ¹¹ tn The negative introduces a clause that serves as a negative attribute; literally the following clause says, “and had no helper” (see GKC 482 §152.u).

[68:5]  ¹² sn God is depicted here as a just ruler. In the ancient Near Eastern world a king was responsible for promoting justice, including caring for the weak and vulnerable, epitomized by the fatherless and widows.

[68:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “God [is] in his holy dwelling place.” He occupies his throne and carries out his royal responsibilities.

[94:6]  ¹⁴ 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).

[23:10]  ¹⁵ tn Or “encroach on” (NIV, NRSV); Heb “go into.”

[1:23]  ¹⁶ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ²¹ 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.

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

[22:7]  ²³ 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.

[3:5]  ²⁴ tn The first person pronoun (a reference to the Lord) indicates that the Lord himself now speaks (see also v. 1). The prophet speaks in vv. 2-4 (see also 2:17).

[3:5]  ²⁵ tn Heb “those who swear [oaths] falsely.” Cf. NIV “perjurers”; TEV “those who give false testimony”; NLT “liars.”

[3:5]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and against the oppressors of the worker for a wage, [the] widow and orphan.”

[3:5]  ²⁷ tn Heb “those who turn aside.”

[3:5]  ²⁸ tn Or “resident foreigner”; NIV “aliens”; NRSV “the alien.”

[1:27]  ²⁹ tn Or “in the sight of”; Grk “with.”

[1:27]  ³⁰ tn Grk “the God and Father.”