I was starting the climb out of a long, dark, lonely valley. I was searching for words to describe what the Lord had been teaching me there. And oh my, in 2018 words began to come.

I wrote and wrote – about these, and other, things:

• Shunning in the church
• Sukkot: The feast of joy
• This “good Christian girl” is a woman now

In the last weeks of 2018, I published two posts, titled, “Defender of the Forsaken,” and (creatively), “Defender of the Forsaken, the Sequel.”

Since then, I’ve renovated and reposted the first three pieces listed above.

Now, the Lord has pointed me back to the last two. As I’ve reflected once again on his love for the marginalized, he has once again blessed, encouraged and challenged my heart.

Who God is

The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.¹ (Deut. 10:17-18)

Thus, the Lord identifies himself as Defender of the Forsaken. He commits to act in behalf of three vulnerable groups.²

• Women, who have been “left” in any number of ways, especially by their husbands. Typically, English Bible versions translate the Hebrew word almanah  as “widow,” but it means: forsaken woman. Its root means: to be bound; to be silent.
• Children, left on their own in any number of ways, by one or both parents. Usually translated, “fatherless” or “orphan,” the Hebrew word yathom comes from a root that means: to be lonely.
• Immigrants, who may have been forsaken in their homeland and may then be rejected and exploited in the land they enter to live. In English Bibles, the Hebrew word ger is often rendered as “foreigner,” “stranger,” “alien” – terms that keep at a distance people who come to live among us. The Amnesty International post, Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants, helps us see why God named this group as one of the most vulnerable.

I explore all this more fully in my first post on the subject – now republished and retitled, Defender of the forsaken – this is God.³

What I learned late

I’ve loved God and studied his Word since I was a child. Yet most of that time, I read right past the verses mentioned in these “defender of the forsaken” posts.

I hate it, and I confess it: Only in midlife, when I found myself forsaken and desperately needing help, did I see how strongly God commits himself to stand with the abandoned and shunned.

Only then did I see how strongly the Spirit of God urges the people of God to do the same.

Now I cannot – I dare not – unsee it.

The God who defends the forsaken
calls those who are his
to befriend the forsaken.

Pondering that, pressing into it, I wrote “the Sequel” post published in 2018. But revisiting that post now, I’ve found it rather a mess and scrapped it.

This post is my new look at God’s cry to his own to be “God with skin on” to the forsaken in our world.

As I write it, I’m sitting with the Lord’s stunning promise in Isaiah 54:4, and inhaling it deeply.

Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame you were made to feel in your youth
and remember no more the reproach of being forsaken.⁴

“I receive it, Lord!” I cry.

I sense his smile. And then I hear: Exhale it too, Deborah. Seek the same for others.

What God has said

Do not wrong the forsaken. Scripture brings up the subject often. Repeatedly, God tells the people in covenant with him:

Do not deprive the asylum seeker or the voiceless child of justice, or take the cloak of the forsaken woman as a pledge. (Deut. 24:17)

Do not oppress the bereaved wife or child, the refugee or the poor. (Zech. 7:10)

Do no wrong or violence to the migrant, the neglected child or the betrayed woman. (Jer. 22:3)

Scripture further shows us: Befriending vulnerable people requires more than not wronging them. It includes acting in their behalf.

Help the distressed. In Deuteronomy 24, God uses repetition to drive home this point:

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the asylum seeker, the deserted child and the abandoned woman.

When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the migrant, the lonely child and the isolated woman. (vv. 19-21)

Rescue the oppressed. In Jeremiah 22:3, in the same breath that God warns, “do (to them) no wrong or violence,” he says:

Do what is right and just;
rescue the wronged
from their oppressors. (CJB)

Who our choices impact

The Lord who tells us, “Befriend the forsaken,” also assures us: Helping others blesses the helpers, as well as the helped.⁵

The opposite is true too. In Deuteronomy 27:19, God requires his people to affirm aloud:

Cursed is the one who perverts justice for the resident foreigner, the defenseless child or the woman bound and silenced by a society’s systems.⁶

What’s more, the Lord strongly warns his people not to go along with leaders who pervert justice in this way. In his anger – and his mercy – God tells us where his mercy stops.

The leaders of the people have misled them.
They have led them down the path of destruction.
That is why the Lord takes no pleasure in the young men
and shows no mercy even to the widows and orphans.
For they are all wicked hypocrites,
and they all speak foolishness.
(Isa. 9:16-17 NLT)

When people who have been treated wrongly, and have cried out to God, harden their hearts against others in need, the Lord abhors it. He does not hesitate to call out the forsaken when they condone, cover up or take part in the heartless treatment of someone else. He warns that he will not defend those who do.

What happened long ago

In ancient Jerusalem, the people in covenant with God did exactly what their Lord had warned them not to do. Generation after generation, God’s prophets urged them to turn and go the other way. When the people stood on the brink of defeat and exile, and still refused to pursue justice for all, God announced:

[To Ezekiel:] You, human one, will you judge? Will you judge the bloody city? Then explain all her detestable practices to her. Say, The Lord God proclaims: City … In you they oppress immigrants and deny the rights of abused children and women. (22:2-3, 7 CEB)

[Through Jeremiah:] If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the vulnerable sojourner, child or woman and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place. (7:5-7)

After the nation’s refusal to repent produced decades in exile, Zechariah reminded a new generation:

This is what the Lord Almighty said [to your ancestors]: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the bereaved woman or child, the refugee or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”

But they [the generations before you] refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry.

“When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,” says the Lord Almighty. (Zech. 7:8-13)

What Job did differently

Job chose differently. In his own words:

I rescued the poor who cried for help,
and the fatherless who had none to assist them.
I took up the case of the stranger.
I made the widow’s heart sing.

God affirmed Job’s words. He called Job, “my servant,” “blameless and upright, a man who fears [me] and shuns evil.”⁷

Yet, suddenly, Job’s world came crashing down. One who had loved God and loved others found himself shattered and deeply bereaved.

Such a thing did not fit with the theology of the day. So Job’s friends and family abandoned him. They blamed him for the devastation in his life.

Even before Job’s trials, he had acted in behalf of the vulnerable. In so doing, he honored and delighted his Lord.

Then, Job found himself vulnerable and forsaken. He felt the searing pain that seemed to have no end. To his credit, Job expressed his raw grief and bewilderment. And also, he listened – when others spoke, when God spoke. He learned what to reject, what to receive, what to probe.

The post, It is God who has wronged me, explores what happened as Job struggled – with his own crushing pain, with the friends who falsely accused him, with the God it seemed had not defended him at all.

It was not easy. It was not quick. But when Job was forsaken, he faced into it, and stumbled through it. In time, he saw his Lord in a whole new light. He identified with hurting people in a whole new way.

What God says today

God’s cry to his people in ancient times is still his cry today.

When Jesus walked the earth

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said, in three of the four Gospels.⁸ That is, the Lord quoted his own words from Leviticus 19:18.

In so doing, the Lord also pointed to the ways to show love that he had listed in Leviticus 19. They include acts of justice and mercy to these vulnerable groups:

• the poor,
• immigrants,
• hired workers,
• the disabled,
• women in patriarchies,
• the elderly.⁹

Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What’s more, he practiced what he preached. Time and again, he befriended people forsaken by the self-righteous of his day. People like:

• Mary Magdalene;
• the Samaritan woman;
• the widow whose son had died – and the son raised from the dead;
• the 10 lepers;
• the blind beggar Bartimaeus;
• the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda, disabled for 38 years;
• the demonized daughter of a Canaanite woman;
• the demonized foreigner named Legion, whom everyone treated like an animal;
• the widow who gave to the Lord her only “two mites.”

Walking this earth, Jesus loved his marginalized neighbors. Routinely, he affirmed and uplifted them, healed and delivered them, called them to follow him and sent them out in his name.

And then, Jesus himself was forsaken. He felt and faced the searing pain of it, in order to deliver us all. “For God so loved the world …”

When he had risen

New Testament letters written by Paul, James and John echo Jesus’ call to “love your neighbor as yourself.”¹⁰

In addition, James wrote:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after the lonely child and the forsaken woman in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (1:17)

But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? (2:6)

Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. (5:4)

And James affirmed:

Those who have not shown mercy will not receive mercy when they are judged. To show mercy is better than to judge. (2:13 NIRV)

Whoever lives in love

The command we have from Christ is blunt:
Loving God includes loving people.
You’ve got to love both.

Whoever does not love
does not know God,
because God is love.

Whoever lives in love
lives in God, and God in them.

Let’s not just talk about love;
let’s practice real love.¹¹

People of God – living in Christ, walking in love – let us befriend the forsaken.

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See also

• Defender of the forsaken – this is God
• Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal
• Whatever happened to loving one another?
• “Burned out on religion? I will give you rest”
• Inhaling the life and breath of God
• Exhaling the life and breath of God

Footnotes

1. I have adapted many of the Bible quotations in this post. That is, in place of the words “widows,” “fatherless/orphans” or “foreigners,” I have substituted other words or phrases that, taken together, more fully reflect the meanings of the Hebrew words noted below. ↩︎
2. Vulnerable women, children and immigrants are not the only people a community may forsake, but God’s attitude towards them reflects his stance toward other persons and groups of people who are easy to silence, dehumanize, ignore. ↩︎
3. If you’ve signed up to get notices when I write a post, you did not get notified of that one, because my email server doesn’t send notices of reposts. ↩︎
4. Adapted from the NIV. ↩︎
5. See the commands in Deuteronomy 24:10-15, 17-22, and the blessings in Deuteronomy 28:1-14. ↩︎
6. Adapted from Deuteronomy 27:19 NET. ↩︎
7. Job 29:12, 13, 16; Job 1:8. ↩︎
8. Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27. ↩︎
9. See Leviticus 19, especially verses 9-18, 20-22, 29, 32-36. ↩︎
10. See, for example, Romans 13:8-10; 1 Corinthians 10:24; Galatians 5:14; James 2:1-13. ↩︎
11. 1 John 4:20 MSG; 1 John 4:8, 16; 1 John 3:18 MSG. ↩︎