“You must not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, they will no doubt cry to me, and I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will burn, and I will kill you with the sword; then your wives will be widows and your children fatherless.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How any society treats its most vulnerable members is a reflection of that society’s moral fiber. The Nazi regime, for instance, rounded up their weakest members and systematically eliminated them. Darwin was right that nature tends to operate on the law of the survival of the fittest. The strongest survive and thrive while the weakest get eaten. People and animals, however, are not the same. We are made in God’s image, and are called to reflect that in our interactions with one another. When it came to the question of how Israel was to treat some of their weakest and most vulnerable members, God was pretty clear on what He expected. Let’s explore what He says here and what it might mean for us.

We are running here on the same basic theme we concluded with yesterday. God cares for the vulnerable. In the ancient world generally, and in the not-so-ancient world as well, widows and orphans were about as vulnerable a lot as you could get. The family unit is – or should be – the strongest foundational block of a society. When that gets broken for some reason, the result is suffering. Suffering first for those who are directly impacted by the breaking. Suffering eventually for the rest of the society who will bear the cost of a fractured foundation. This all matters to God. It’s why we see Him telling His people over and over in various places to care for these victims of sin’s terrible havoc on a society.

What God is saying to the people of Israel here is uncomfortably clear. If the larger culture didn’t go out of its way to care for these vulnerable individuals (and He would later spell out some of the ways this was supposed to happen), they were going to cry out to God for help. He’s not talking here about widows and orphans making some kind of a formal request to Him. People in places of suffering and abuse and exploitation cry out to God for help. That’s a natural reaction. People have always looked up when things have gotten bad enough. These widows and orphans who were being mistreated by the broader culture were going to cry out to God about their mistreatment. And God was going to hear them.

Two things here strike me as interesting before we move forward. First, notice that God doesn’t define what mistreating these folks looks like. He assumed the people would be able to fill in the blanks on that themselves. They could fill it with things like their not being able to get enough to eat and so facing starvation. Or perhaps with not being able to find shelter and being at risk of exposure. It could have been not having the opportunity to work to provide those things for themselves. Maybe they were being taken advantage of and used for someone else’s convenience or illicit pleasure. There are lots of ways to mistreat a person. This law covered the whole category.

Second, don’t miss the significance of the end of v. 23 where God says He will certainly hear them. Sometimes it feels like our cries to God don’t make a difference. He doesn’t respond the way we want Him to respond or in the timeframe we have in mind, and so therefore He must not be there. At the very least He must not care. But by His own insistence, He does hear and He will act. How and when that happens will be on His timetable, but He will be decisive and clear in His actions when they come.

In this case, when God hears about the mistreatment of these vulnerable members of His people, He’s going to be pretty hot. I should add that God is using a figure of speech here. He’s not learning about this at the time of their cries in the sense that He did not previously know. Of course He knew. He’s God. But, given His commitment to letting us make meaningful and consequential choices, He allows us to make choices – even choices that cause harm to others – and lets the consequences of those choices play out fairly naturally.

Look at what God’s response will be: “I will kill you with the sword.” Yikes! How is this possibly just? Why would He say something like that? Well, for starters, we should not imagine God showing up in person and swinging a sword around to kill a bunch of Israelites. Neither would anyone in the group originally hearing Moses saying this think anything along those lines. What they would have understood was that God was going to allow them to be militarily defeated in response to their unfaithfulness. If they weren’t willing to live life His way, then He was going to withdraw His hand of protection from around them and let their enemies conquer them freely. The ancient world was a pretty violent place. Nations fought against other nations almost constantly. When you think about all of the other nations around Israel who were once powerful and are today gone from memory, the fact that this ancient people still exists is a pretty remarkably – dare I say miraculous? – thing. If they mistreated the widows and orphans in their midst, though, they would not be able to count on this protection being there any longer.

The reason God specifies this as the punishment for this particular national crime is significant. He’ll do all of this and then their wives will be widows and their children will be orphans. What is this? There are a couple of things to see here. First, this is the law of the tooth in action. God was using the same standard with them that He had told them to use with each other. In this case, the punishment was going to fit the crime. They abused widows and orphans, so their wives would become widows, and their children would become orphans. If they were going to exploit and abuse vulnerable people, their vulnerable people were going to be exploited and abused in return.

There’s one more thing here, though, and this is where I want to finish things up today. Who was God talking to here? The nation of Israel, yes, but who specifically was He talking to in this command? The men of Israel. Now, on the one hand, we could roll our eyes at this because of course God was talking to the men. God was only ever talking to the men. Of course, that’s not true, but the criticism is there all the same, so let’s at least acknowledge it. I think there’s something more significant here. God was calling the men of Israel to look out for the least, the last, and the lost in the midst. He was calling them to be compassionate protectors of the weak and the vulnerable. He was, in this sense, calling them to be men.

Men today, but especially young men, are told in a thousand different ways that it’s okay to be selfish, to put their needs ahead of the people around them, to look out for themselves and the things they want before worrying about anyone else. They are told that to adopt any picture or definition of manliness makes them instantly toxic. They are encouraged to adopt a kind of permanent adolescence where they can fairly well do whatever they want while the women in their lives pick up the slack. Virtues like courage, compassion, and care for the vulnerable are neglected or even mocked. These kinds of messages are ruining our culture in more ways than I want to even begin trying to explore right now.

God was calling the men of Israel to step up and be men. While this command doesn’t apply to followers of Jesus, God still made men to be men. Men are not better than women. Our value is equal. Neither are we more significant than children. But men are different than either of them. And, when it comes to parts of a population that are most vulnerable, women and children wind up fitting into that category a whole lot more often than men. That’s just cultural reality. it’s not a good thing, but it is a thing. Because of this, men often have cultural power that can be used for the benefit of those around them. Taking the lead in caring for the vulnerable in their midst is a very good use of this power. Indeed, if we don’t use it well, God will eventually hold us to account for this lack. So, let’s follow the example of Jesus and live up to the character of our God. The world needs this. Let’s step up and provide it.