Top 7 Bible Verses About Orphans

God is highly concerned about orphans. Here are 7 of the top Bible verses about orphans.

Psalm 68:5 “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.”

What a tender side of God this is Who is a Father to the fatherless (orphans) and protector of the widows. Most of the world seems to ignore the widows and the orphans because they don’t seem to matter in this world. Those who teach and preach the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, which as Paul wrote, is not really a gospel at all (Gal 1:7), must think that they’re in such a state because they don’t have enough faith. Paul wrote that “the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:11b-12) and if a church does teach and preach the real gospel, then it will have true religion, and true religion is highly concerned with orphans and widows (James 1:27) as we will read next.

James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

Want a great definition of pure religion? There is no better definition found in the Bible than in James 1:27 and it includes keeping oneself unstained or unspotted from the world but the first order of importance, and perhaps why James puts it first, is that of visiting the orphans and the widows in their affliction. Can you think of a better place than a nursing home or an assisted care living center to minister to next to an orphanage because almost every one of the nursing home residents are both orphans (parents deceased) and widows or widowers (with their spouse gone).?

John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

Just before Jesus left to go to the cross and die for their sins (and ours) and later ascend back up to heaven, the disciples were very anxious about Jesus’ speaking that He was going away and to where they could not (yet) come. Jesus’ reassurance to them is one for us too that He will not leave us orphans because He promises that He will come again to them and for us.

Exodus 22:22-24 “You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.”

This verse is crystal clear about God’s concern for the widows and orphans. The law is clear. They are not to be mistreated and this mistreatment could be in the form of neglect, abuse, or taking advantage of those who are in a defenseless position. For those who do take advantage of these disenfranchised people, God’s wrath is a promise.

Psalm 82:3 “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.”

When the psalmist writes about maintaining the rights of the afflicted and destitute, which consist of the weak and the fatherless (orphans), he is establishing the fact that Israel did have laws that defended the defenseless but in Jesus’ day, there was no justice for these people which is why He rebuked those were the experts in the law and they knew better; “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation” (Matt 23:14). The word “woe” is Greek for “ouai” and means it is a judgment from God.

Isaiah 1:17 “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”

Isaiah would have never written that they need to “Learn to do good [and] seek justice” and “correct oppression” if they were already doing it. They needed to learn to do this because apparently they were not providing justice to the orphans nor were they pleading for the cause of the widows. This was all the more reason for Isaiah’s scathing chastisement of Judah and part of the reason that they would be sent into captivity.

Psalm 146:9 “The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”

We are all sojourners in this world; just passing through so we are no different than strangers today who we are commanded to make feel welcome (Matt 25:31-40). God upholds the widow and the orphans but in due time, He will bring to the wicked His judgment (Rev 20:12-15).

Conclusion

When Job wrote “Because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him” (Job 29:12) he was saying that he knew that it was good to help those who cannot help themselves; like the poor and the orphans. God will hold us accountable for everything we do in this life but also includes our neglecting the widows and orphans because if we do neglect them, this only proves that we are not practicing nor living out what James calls pure religions (James 1:27).

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Blind Chance or Intelligent Design available on Amazon.