“Ye shall not afflict any widow nor fatherless child.  If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, your children fatherless.”

Will you not now be comforted?  “The Eternal makes your sorrows his own,” and Himself stands forth as your protector against every ill.

“When thou cuttest down thy harvest in thy field, and hast forgotten the sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it, but it shall be for the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the works of thy hands.”

If God’s will is done, you see you will not suffer.  He will raise you up friends, and those who obey Him, who wish to please Him, will always be ready to aid you for His sake.  As shown to himself, he regards and will reward the kindness shown to you, and He has all hearts in his hands.  But this is not all.  A certain portion of every Israelite’s possessions is to be given to furnish the table of the Lord, and, as if to assure you that He considers you His own, and will perform the part of husband and father for you at that table, and in his own house he provides for you ever a place.  “In the tithes of wine, corn and oil, the firstlings of the herds and flocks, in all that is to be devoted to the service of the Lord, you have your share.

“At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year and lay it up within the gates.  And the Levite, because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come and eat and be satisfied, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.”

Do you sorrowfully say that no such table is now spread?  But He who thus provided still lives, and is the same as then.  The silver and the gold are His, and the cattle upon a thousand hills, and he ruleth all things by the Word of His power.  They that trust in him shall never be confounded.

“Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless, nor take the widow’s raiment to pledge.  Why?  Because they have no earthly friend to redeem the latter or plead for the former.  Weak and unguarded, they are exposed to all these evils, but that He, the Eternal, takes them under his own especial care; and instead of compelling them to depend on the insecure tenure of man’s compassion, or even justice, institutes laws for their benefit, the disobedience of which is sin against Himself.”

Scattered through all the sacred volume are words which, equally with those we have quoted, speak forth Jehovah’s interest in the helpless.  “Leave thy fatherless children to me,” he said, by his prophet Jeremiah, at a time when misery, desolation, and destruction were falling on Judea and her sons for their awful impiety.  “Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me.”  “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.”