They slay the widow and the stranger, And murder the fatherless.
Parallel translations
- WEB They kill the widow and the alien, and murder the fatherless.
- KJV They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.
- BSB They kill the widow and the foreigner; they murder the fatherless.
- NASB They kill the widow and the stranger And murder the orphans.
- NLT They kill widows and foreigners and murder 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
The wicked kill the widow, the foreigner, and the fatherless. They prey on the most vulnerable and defenseless.
Overview
The widow, alien, and orphan are those God especially commands His people to protect, so attacking them is the height of wickedness. Such cruelty exposes hearts utterly indifferent to God's law of love. God Himself defends these vulnerable ones, and Christ's people are called to care for them as pure religion (Deuteronomy 10:18; James 1:27).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 6
- Isa 10:2to deprive the needy from justice, and to rob the poor among my people of their rights, that widows may be their plunder, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!
- Ezek 22:7In you have they treated father and mother with contempt. Among you they have oppressed the foreigner. In you they have wronged the fatherless and the widow.
- Jer 7:6if you don’t oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, and don’t shed innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt:
- 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.
- 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.
- Isa 13:15–18Everyone who is found will be thrust through. Everyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 94:6 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
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.