Proverbs 31:5

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go. I will counsel you with my eye on you.

Get wisdom. Get understanding. Don’t forget, and don’t deviate from the words of my mouth.

My son, listen to your father’s instruction, and don’t forsake your mother’s teaching:

He executes justice for the fatherless and widow and loves the foreigner in giving him food and clothing.

I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word.

Therefore Sheol has enlarged its desire, and opened its mouth without measure; and their glory, their multitude, their pomp, and he who rejoices among them, descend into it.

“You shall not take advantage of any widow or fatherless child.

Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.

You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.

Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; and a man’s eyes are never satisfied.

“You shall not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.

If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep with his pledge.

My son, if you will receive my words, and store up my commandments within you,

Wine is a mocker and beer is a brawler. Whoever is led astray by them is not wise.

If you take your neighbor’s garment as collateral, you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down,

“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. You shall not testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice.

“You shall not oppress an alien, for you know the heart of an alien, since you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

“ ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor show favoritism to the great; but you shall judge your neighbor in righteousness.

You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.”

Only be careful, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your children and your children’s children—

You shall observe to do all the commandments which I command you today, that you may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers.

You have indeed struck Edom, and your heart has lifted you up. Enjoy the glory of it, and stay at home; for why should you meddle to your harm, that you fall, even you, and Judah with you?’ ”

“Defend the weak, the poor, and the fatherless. Maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.

I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

Give me understanding, and I will keep your law. Yes, I will obey it with my whole heart.

I will never forget your precepts, for with them, you have revived me.

For though Yahweh is high, yet he looks after the lowly; but he knows the proud from afar.

He taught me, and said to me: “Let your heart retain my words. Keep my commandments, and live.

Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you.

A wicked man receives a bribe in secret, to pervert the ways of justice.

My son, give me your heart; and let your eyes keep in my ways.

Sheol, the barren womb; the earth that is not satisfied with water; and the fire that doesn’t say, ‘Enough.’

It is not for kings, Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes to say, ‘Where is strong drink?’

He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with increase: this also is vanity.

Your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes and follows after rewards. They don’t defend the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come to them.

They have grown fat. They shine; yes, they excel in deeds of wickedness. They don’t plead the cause, the cause of the fatherless, that they may prosper; and they don’t defend the rights of the needy.

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says Yahweh: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Please listen to this, you heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice, and pervert all equity.

Their hands are on that which is evil to do it diligently. The ruler and judge ask for a bribe; and the powerful man dictates the evil desire of his soul. Thus they conspire together.

Honor widows who are widows indeed.

It shall be to you for a fringe, that you may see it, and remember all Yahweh’s commandments, and do them; and that you don’t follow your own heart and your own eyes, after which you used to play the prostitute;

You shall surely restore to him the pledge when the sun goes down, that he may sleep in his garment and bless you. It shall be righteousness to you before Yahweh your God.

You shall not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, nor take a widow’s clothing in pledge;

You shall say before Yahweh your God, “I have put away the holy things out of my house, and also have given them to the Levite, to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all your commandment which you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, neither have I forgotten them.

‘Cursed is he who withholds justice from the foreigner, fatherless, and widow.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites;

You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.

Those who sit in the gate talk about me. I am the song of the drunkards.

I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I don’t forget your commandments.

to deliver you from the way of evil, from the men who speak perverse things,

My son, don’t forget my teaching; but let your heart keep my commandments:

For why should you, my son, be captivated with an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another?

for their Defender is strong. He will plead their case against you.

Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind will imagine confusing things.

The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the arrogance of men shall be brought low; and Yahweh alone shall be exalted in that day.

What do you mean that you crush my people, and grind the face of the poor?” says the Lord, Yahweh of Armies.

Woe to those who join house to house, who lay field to field, until there is no room, and you are made to dwell alone in the middle of the land!

They prepare the table. They set the watch. They eat. They drink. Rise up, you princes, oil the shield!

if you don’t oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, and don’t shed innocent blood in this place, and don’t walk after other gods to your own hurt;

Yahweh 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, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place.

behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,” says Yahweh, “and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against its inhabitants, and against all these nations around. I will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations.

“Call together the archers against Babylon, all those who bend the bow. Encamp against her all around. Let none of it escape. Pay her back according to her work. According to all that she has done, do to her; for she has been proud against Yahweh, against the Holy One of Israel.

When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh.

and has not wronged any, but has restored to the debtor his pledge, has taken nothing by robbery, has given his bread to the hungry, and has covered the naked with a garment;

In 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.

As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them into Chaldea.

if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that which he had taken by robbery, walk in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity; he will surely live. He will not die.

They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of bronze, of iron, of wood, and of stone.

On the day of our king, the princes made themselves sick with the heat of wine. He joined his hand with mockers.

Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith.

Yes, moreover, wine is treacherous. An arrogant man who doesn’t stay at home, who enlarges his desire as Sheol, and he is like death, and can’t be satisfied, but gathers to himself all nations, and heaps to himself all peoples.

Don’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.’

I 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.

Soldiers also asked him, saying, “What about us? What must we do?” He said to them, “Extort from no one by violence, neither accuse anyone wrongfully. Be content with your wages.”

A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’

Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

by which also you are saved, if you hold firmly the word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

As you know, we exhorted, comforted, and implored every one of you, as a father does his own children,

and that you make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, even as we instructed you;

Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good.

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber.

And behold, a pale horse, and the name of he who sat on it was Death. Hades followed with him. Authority over one fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with famine, with death, and by the wild animals of the earth was given to him.