Ecclesiastes 4:1

He saw the tears of the oppressed who had no comforter, while power lay with their oppressors. The suffering caused by injustice and the absence of comfort weighs heavily on him.

Cross-references · 40

• Eccl 3:16Moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, that wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, that wickedness was there.
• Eccl 5:8If you see the oppression of the poor, and the violent taking away of justice and righteousness in a district, don’t marvel at the matter: for one official is eyed by a higher one; and there are officials over them.
• Isa 5:7For the vineyard of Yahweh of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for justice, but, behold, oppression; for righteousness, but, behold, a cry of distress.
• Job 35:9“By reason of the multitude of oppressions they cry out. They cry for help by reason of the arm of the mighty.
• Isa 59:13–15transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
• Jas 5:4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies.
• Ps 12:5“Because of the oppression of the weak and because of the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says Yahweh; “I will set him in safety from those who malign him.”
• Mal 3:5I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don’t fear me,” says Yahweh of Armies.
• Lam 1:2She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her: All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
• Isa 51:23and I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to your soul, ‘Bow down, that we may walk over you;’ and you have laid your back as the ground, like a street to those who walk over.”
• Ps 42:9I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
• 2 Tim 4:16–17At my first defense, no one came to help me, but all left me. May it not be held against them.
• Lam 1:9Her filthiness was in her skirts; she didn’t remember her latter end; therefore she has come down astoundingly; she has no comforter: “See, Yahweh, my affliction; for the enemy has magnified himself.”
• Matt 26:56But all this has happened, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him, and fled.
• Ps 42:3My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”
• Isa 59:7Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. desolation and destruction are in their paths.
• Ps 69:20Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none.
• Ps 142:4Look on my right, and see; for there is no one who is concerned for me. Refuge has fled from me. No one cares for my soul.
• Judg 4:3The children of Israel cried to Yahweh, for he had nine hundred chariots of iron; and he mightily oppressed the children of Israel for twenty years.
• Job 6:29Please return. Let there be no injustice. Yes, return again. My cause is righteous.
• Exod 1:13–14The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve,
• Exod 1:22Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”
• Ps 80:5You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in large measure.
• Exod 2:23–24In the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.
• Job 24:7–12They lie all night naked without clothing, and have no covering in the cold.
• Deut 28:48therefore you will serve your enemies whom Yahweh sends against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck, until he has destroyed you.
• Prov 28:15–16As a roaring lion or a charging bear, so is a wicked ruler over helpless people.
• Job 16:4I also could speak as you do. If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you,
• Exod 1:16and he said, “When you perform the duty of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stool; if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.”
• Prov 28:3A needy man who oppresses the poor is like a driving rain which leaves no crops.
• Deut 28:33A nation which you don’t know eat the fruit of your ground and all of your work. You will only be oppressed and crushed always;
• Mal 2:13This again you do: you cover Yahweh’s altar with tears, with weeping, and with sighing, because he doesn’t regard the offering any more, neither receives it with good will at your hand.
• Neh 5:1–5Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brothers the Jews.
• Ps 10:9–10He lurks in secret as a lion in his ambush. He lies in wait to catch the helpless. He catches the helpless, when he draws him in his net.
• Eccl 7:7Surely extortion makes the wise man foolish; and a bribe destroys the understanding.
• Job 19:21–22“Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends; for the hand of God has touched me.
• Exod 5:16–19No straw is given to your servants, and they tell us, ‘Make brick!’ and behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is in your own people.”
• Judg 10:7–8Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the children of Ammon.
• Mal 3:18Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn’t serve him.
• Prov 19:7All the relatives of the poor shun him: how much more do his friends avoid him! He pursues them with pleas, but they are gone.

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