(6) The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.--Grouped together, as in Deuteronomy 14:29; Deuteronomy 24:19-21, as the three great representatives of the poor and helpless, standing most in need therefore of man's justice and of the divine protection.Verse 6. - The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow; specially commended to the care of the Israelites (Exodus 22:21, 22 - a passage belonging to one of the most evidently primitive portions of the Pentateuch; Deuteronomy 24:17, 19, 21; Deuteronomy 27:19; comp. Isaiah 1:17, 23; Isaiah 10:2; Ezekiel 22:7). In plus; i.e. specially in Jerusalem, but not altogether excluding the rest of the kingdom (see vers. 3, 7). 7:1-16 No observances, professions, or supposed revelations, will profit, if men do not amend their ways and their doings. None can claim an interest in free salvation, who allow themselves in the practice of known sin, or live in the neglect of known duty. They thought that the temple they profaned would be their protection. But all who continue in sin because grace has abounded, or that grace may abound, make Christ the minister of sin; and the cross of Christ, rightly understood, forms the most effectual remedy to such poisonous sentiments. The Son of God gave himself for our transgressions, to show the excellence of the Divine law, and the evil of sin. Never let us think we may do wickedness without suffering for it.If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,.... Who have none to help them, and who ought to have mercy and compassion shown them, as well as justice done them; and should not be injured by private men in their persons and properties, and much less oppressed in courts of judicature by those who should be the patrons and defenders of them: and shed not innocent blood in this place: in the temple, where the sanhedrim, or great court of judicature, sat; for this does not so much respect the commission of murder by private persons, as the condemnation of innocent men to death by the judges, which is all one as shedding their blood; and by which actions they defiled that temple they cried up, and put their trust in; to shed innocent blood in any place, Kimchi observes, is an evil; but to shed it in this place, in the temple, was a greater evil, because this was the place of the Shechinah, or where the divine Majesty dwelt: neither walk after other gods to your hurt; the gods of e people, as the Targum; "for this", as the Arabic version renders it, "is pernicious to you"; idolatry was more hurtful to themselves than to God; and therefore it is dissuaded from by an argument taken from their own interest. |
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