-
Psalms 12:5
“ Because of the devastation of the needy and the groaning of the poor, I will now rise up,” says the LORD.“ I will provide safety for the one who longs for it.”
-
Psalms 146:7
executing justice for the exploited and giving food to the hungry. The LORD frees prisoners.
-
Deuteronomy 24:14-15
“ Do not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether one of your Israelite brothers or one of the resident aliens in a town in your land.You are to pay him his wages each day before the sun sets, because he is poor and depends on them. Otherwise he will cry out to the LORD against you, and you will be held guilty.
-
Ezekiel 22:7
Father and mother are treated with contempt, and the resident alien is exploited within you. The fatherless and widow are oppressed in you.
-
Proverbs 22:22-23
Don’t rob a poor person because he is poor, and don’t crush the oppressed at the city gate,for the LORD will champion their cause and will plunder those who plunder them.
-
Isaiah 58:6-7
Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke?Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore your own flesh and blood?
-
Psalms 9:9
The LORD is a refuge for the persecuted, a refuge in times of trouble.
-
Ezekiel 22:12-14
People who live in you accept bribes in order to shed blood. You take interest and profit on a loan and brutally extort your neighbors. You have forgotten me. This is the declaration of the Lord GOD.“‘ Now look, I clap my hands together against the dishonest profit you have made and against the blood shed among you.Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the days when I deal with you? I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will act.
-
Psalms 72:12
For he will rescue the poor who cry out and the afflicted who have no helper.
-
Micah 3:2-4
You hate good and love evil. You tear off people’s skin and strip their flesh from their bones.You eat the flesh of my people after you strip their skin from them and break their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”Then they will cry out to the LORD, but he will not answer them. He will hide his face from them at that time because of the crimes they have committed.
-
James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail over the miseries that are coming on you.Your wealth has rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten.Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days.Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Armies.You have lived luxuriously on the earth and have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous, who does not resist you.
-
Micah 2:1-3
Woe to those who dream up wickedness and prepare evil plans on their beds! At morning light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.They covet fields and seize them; they also take houses. They deprive a man of his home, a person of his inheritance.Therefore, the LORD says: I am now planning a disaster against this nation; you cannot free your necks from it. Then you will not walk so proudly because it will be an evil time.
-
Psalms 109:31
For he stands at the right hand of the needy to save him from those who would condemn him.
-
Psalms 10:14-18
But you yourself have seen trouble and grief, observing it in order to take the matter into your hands. The helpless one entrusts himself to you; you are a helper of the fatherless.Break the arm of the wicked, evil person, until you look for his wickedness, but it can’t be found.The LORD is King forever and ever; the nations will perish from his land.LORD, you have heard the desire of the humble; you will strengthen their hearts. You will listen carefully,doing justice for the fatherless and the oppressed so that mere humans from the earth may terrify them no more.
-
Proverbs 14:31
The one who oppresses the poor person insults his Maker, but one who is kind to the needy honors him.
-
Job 27:13-23
This is a wicked man’s lot from God, the inheritance the ruthless receive from the Almighty.Even if his children increase, they are destined for the sword; his descendants will never have enough food.Those who survive him will be buried by the plague, yet their widows will not weep for them.Though he piles up silver like dust and heaps up fine clothing like clay—he may heap it up, but the righteous will wear it, and the innocent will divide up his silver.The house he built is like a moth’s cocoon or a shelter set up by a watchman.He lies down wealthy, but will do so no more; when he opens his eyes, it is gone.Terrors overtake him like a flood; a storm wind sweeps him away at night.An east wind picks him up, and he is gone; it carries him away from his place.It blasts at him without mercy, while he flees desperately from its force.It claps its hands at him and scoffs at him from its place.
-
Psalms 72:4
May he vindicate the afflicted among the people, help the poor, and crush the oppressor.
-
James 2:6
Yet you have dishonored the poor. Don’t the rich oppress you and drag you into court?
-
Jeremiah 7:6-15
if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods, bringing harm on yourselves,I will allow you to live in this place, the land I gave to your ancestors long ago and forever.But look, you keep trusting in deceitful words that cannot help.“‘ Do you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known?Then do you come and stand before me in this house that bears my name and say,“ We are rescued, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts”?Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it. This is the LORD’s declaration.“‘ But return to my place that was at Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first. See what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.Now, because you have done all these things— this is the LORD’s declaration— and because I have spoken to you time and time again but you wouldn’t listen, and I have called to you, but you wouldn’t answer,what I did to Shiloh I will do to the house that bears my name, the house in which you trust, the place that I gave you and your ancestors.I will banish you from my presence, just as I banished all of your brothers, all the descendants of Ephraim.’
-
Proverbs 23:10
Don’t move an ancient boundary marker, and don’t encroach on the fields of the fatherless,
-
Isaiah 14:4-32
you will sing this song of contempt about the king of Babylon and say: How the oppressor has quieted down, and how the raging has become quiet!The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers.It struck the peoples in anger with unceasing blows. It subdued the nations in rage with relentless persecution.The whole earth is calm and at rest; people shout with a ringing cry.Even the cypresses and the cedars of Lebanon rejoice over you:“ Since you have been laid low, no lumberjack has come against us.”Sheol below is eager to greet your coming, stirring up the spirits of the departed for you— all the rulers of the earth— making all the kings of the nations rise from their thrones.They all respond to you, saying,“ You too have become as weak as we are; you have become like us!Your splendor has been brought down to Sheol, along with the music of your harps. Maggots are spread out under you, and worms cover you.”Shining morning star, how you have fallen from the heavens! You destroyer of nations, you have been cut down to the ground.You said to yourself,“ I will ascend to the heavens; I will set up my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of the gods’ assembly, in the remotest parts of the North.I will ascend above the highest clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”But you will be brought down to Sheol into the deepest regions of the Pit.Those who see you will stare at you; they will look closely at you:“ Is this the man who caused the earth to tremble, who shook the kingdoms,who turned the world into a wilderness, who destroyed its cities and would not release the prisoners to return home?”All the kings of the nations lie in splendor, each in his own tomb.But you are thrown out without a grave, like a worthless branch, covered by those slain with the sword and dumped into a rocky pit like a trampled corpse.You will not join them in burial, because you destroyed your land and slaughtered your own people. The offspring of evildoers will never be mentioned again.Prepare a place of slaughter for his sons, because of the iniquity of their ancestors. They will never rise up to possess a land or fill the surface of the earth with cities.“ I will rise up against them”— this is the declaration of the LORD of Armies—“ and I will cut off from Babylon her reputation, remnant, offspring, and posterity”— this is the LORD’s declaration.“ I will make her a swampland and a region for herons, and I will sweep her away with the broom of destruction.” This is the declaration of the LORD of Armies.The LORD of Armies has sworn: As I have purposed, so it will be; as I have planned it, so it will happen.I will break Assyria in my land; I will tread him down on my mountain. Then his yoke will be taken from them, and his burden will be removed from their shoulders.This is the plan prepared for the whole earth, and this is the hand stretched out against all the nations.The LORD of Armies himself has planned it; therefore, who can stand in its way? It is his hand that is outstretched, so who can turn it back?In the year that King Ahaz died, this pronouncement came:Don’t rejoice, all of you in Philistia, because the rod of the one who struck you is broken. For a viper will come from the root of a snake, and from its egg comes a flying serpent.Then the firstborn of the poor will be well fed, and the impoverished will lie down in safety, but I will kill your root with hunger, and your remnant will be slain.Wail, you gates! Cry out, city! Tremble with fear, all Philistia! For a cloud of dust is coming from the north, and there is no one missing from the invader’s ranks.What answer will be given to the messengers from that nation? The LORD has founded Zion, and his oppressed people find refuge in her.