Protection and Care for the Vulnerable

Jesus was a first-century Jew, and our scripture reading this week comes from the Hebrew scriptures that would have shaped Jesus’ own theology and ethics. Our friends at “A Sanctified Art”, who developed our theme for this season, say: “Throughout his ministry, Jesus emphasized the last, the least, and the lost, building upon the mandates of the Hebrew Scriptures to care for the immigrant, widow, and orphan among you.”

Retired religious studies professor Heather Anne Thiessen has pulled together some helpful interpretive notes on our scripture for today. She writes, “Our verses concern various provisions that are designed, as far as we can tell, to safeguard the well-being of poor and vulnerable members of the patriarchal society of ancient Israel. … The word translated orphan throughout these verses is literally “fatherless.” The “fatherless” do not have a patriarch to protect and provide for them; in the society of ancient Israel, that would make them particularly vulnerable. … Verse 18, which is largely repeated in verse 22, reminds the Israelites of the experience of slavery in Egypt, and the redemptive character of God. By implication, that redemption was not for the purpose of turning around and oppressing others in turn. A people that aims to walk in the way of this redemptive God will live redemptively. They will act so as to move the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow not to cry out against them, but to bless them.”