What Does the Bible Say About Orphans

The Bible is full of references to orphans, the fatherless, and adoption. God’s heart and passion for them is clear. Here are just a few references:

God Adopts
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ (Romans 8:15)

So that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:5)

He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ. (Eph 1:5)

God Commands
Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. (Deuteronomy 24:17)

Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)

God Promises He Knows Them
For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . . When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. (Psalm 139:13-15)

He Sees Them
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you: you are the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:14)

The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 10:14)

He Has Compassion on Them
A father of the fatherless and a judge and protector of the widows is God in His holy habitation. God places the solitary in families and gives the desolate a home in which to dwell. Ps. 68:5-6a.

He Defends Them
Do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10:18)

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. (Psalm 68:5)

He Will Come to Them
I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. (John 14:18)

[HT: Bethlehem Baptist Church]