When I first read his scriptural and theological critique of the movement, I was startled. Smolin, law professor and leading international adoption expert, who has written extensively on the Christian orphan care movement. Isaiah 10:2Ī very thought-provoking analysis of scriptures such as these comes from David M. * …to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. * Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. * God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. * Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. Just a few of the many examples of their connection: But how did I miss such a glaring connection between a fatherless child and a husbandless woman? They are referenced countless times in the Bible, mostly together in the same verse, which indicates that they may have even lost the same person within the same family unit. What mainly concerned me was that God sets the fatherless (in Jewish culture often synonymous with “orphan”) in families.

Until recently, the clause on the fatherless spoke much more loudly to me than the clause on the widows, as if the widows might as well not be in the verse at all. God sets the lonely in families.”Īs someone who wants to see vulnerable children protected, defended and cared for, this particular verse in the Bible has always been the most meaningful to me. “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in God’s holy dwelling.

Widows and orphans bible verse