Strangers, Widows, & the Fatherless - Exodus 22:21-24

22:21-24 - I’ve been sick for the last like 2 weeks and it’s been incredibly painful. It’s not the sickest I’ve ever been but it’s really knocked me on my butt. Maybe I’m just getting old but man it really took me out and I’m still not entirely better yet. Like all my hopes and dreams just died while laying in bed coughing up a lung, it’s actually been quite depressing. Anyway, the Law of Moses continues, that strangers should not be vexed or “oppressed” “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” TB notes that this next section of laws were to protect “some particularly vulnerable social groups,” which is another example of the God of Israel being concerned about the welfare of those who don’t have a lot of power within the societies where they live.

It’s actually a very interesting commentary on God’s priorities as a whole and something that is worthy of our consideration when deciding what exactly it means to be Christ-like in our own lives. Strangers could easily be taken advantage of when they showed up to a town, especially anciently because there was no social media or any way for them to be tracked if they go missing. We see it countless times in the scriptures like in Sodom and Gomorrah and in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the vulnerability of travelers and strangers.

The law continues “Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.” This is a concept that always blows my mind because I can’t for the life of me fathom how someone looks at a widow or fatherless kids or a single mom and think “yeah, there’s my pay day right there.” When my grandpa died, I was astonished at the people who came out of the woodworks to take advantage of my very elderly, newly widowed grandma. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been taken advantage of as a single mom, people who looked at me and knew that no man was going to come to rescue me so just conned me or threatened me or took advantage of my because I had no one else to come back and do anything about it.

And as far as the fatherless go, it might mean orphan as well, but any child who is missing a parent in their lives is vulnerable regardless of which one and in what capacity. I’ve seen interviews with predators of children after they go to jail and so many of them say something along the lines of “I choose the children to prey on, I watch to see if they have a father in their lives. If there’s no father to protect them, then that’s my target.” I take issue with that because of the lack of my own children not having a father present in their lives which made them vulnerable. And even though I’ve done my best, they are still at risk in so many ways of having their lives turn out poorly just because their dad walked away. And all of this is to be kept in mind that when Christ came to the earth, he spent a significant portion of his life as the oldest son in a fatherless household. Mary was a widow, Joseph had to have died sometime between when Jesus was 12 to when he was 30 which means that when Jesus started his mortal ministry, he had spent probably many years shouldering the burden of caring for a widowed mother and many fatherless children, so this is a special place in his heart.

What else is interesting with the widows and the fatherless is that the punishment isn’t just “death” like so many of the previously discussed crimes or simply mentioned as a “don’t do it” like the stranger one just previously. In fact, the punishment for abusing widows and vulnerable children was that the cries of these affected individuals would be attended to by God Himself, personally, ‘and y wrath shall wax hot, and I will kil you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.” God will personally administer punishment onto those who abuse these vulnerable women and children, and the punishment isn’t just execution, but death by the sword and the family members of the man who does this will then be placed into the same situation that they found their victims in. Sometimes people don’t make the connections between their victims and the severity of the crimes until they see it happening to themselves or someone they care about.