Do not remove the ancient landmark, Nor enter the fields of the fatherless;
Parallel translations
- WEB Don’t move the ancient boundary stone. Don’t encroach on the fields of the fatherless:
- KJV Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:
- BSB Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless,
- NASB ¶Do not move the ancient boundary Or go into the fields of the fatherless,
- NLT Don’t cheat your neighbor by moving the ancient boundary markers; don’t take the land of defenseless orphans.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Do not move ancient boundary stones or seize the fields of orphans.
Overview
This repeats the boundary-stone warning (22:28) and applies it pointedly to the fatherless, the most defenseless. Encroaching on an orphan's land is a grave injustice against those with no human advocate. God's special care for the fatherless runs throughout Scripture and is honored in Christ, who gives the helpless a sure Defender (Ps. 68:5).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Zech 7:10Don’t oppress the widow, nor the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.’
- Prov 22:28Don’t move the ancient boundary stone, which your fathers have set up.
- Jas 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
- Jer 22:3Yahweh says: “Execute justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong. Do no violence, to the foreigner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed innocent blood in this place.
- Deut 27:17‘Cursed is he who removes his neighbor’s landmark.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
- Job 24:2–3There are people who remove the landmarks. They violently take away flocks, and feed them.
- Deut 19:14You shall not remove your neighbor’s landmark, which they of old time have set, in your inheritance which you shall inherit, in the land that Yahweh your God gives you to possess.
- Job 22:9You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
- 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.
- Job 31:21–23if I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, because I saw my help in the gate,
- Ps 94:6They kill the widow and the alien, and murder the fatherless.
- Jer 7:5For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if you thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor;
- Job 6:27Yes, you would even cast lots for the fatherless, and make merchandise of your friend.
- Job 24:9There are those who pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor,
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Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.
How Proverbs 23:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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