Yesaya 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ¹ 

they associate with ²  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ³  payoffs. ⁴ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁵ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ⁶ 

Yesaya 3:14

3:14 The Lord comes to pronounce judgment

on the leaders of his people and their officials.

He says, ⁷  “It is you ⁸  who have ruined ⁹  the vineyard! ¹⁰ 

You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor. ¹¹ 

Yesaya 5:7

5:7 Indeed ¹²  Israel ¹³  is the vineyard of the Lord who commands armies,

the people ¹⁴  of Judah are the cultivated place in which he took delight.

He waited for justice, but look what he got – disobedience! ¹⁵ 

He waited for fairness, but look what he got – cries for help! ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 7:6

7:6 Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land, children who have lost their fathers, and women who have lost their husbands. ¹⁷  Stop killing innocent people ¹⁸  in this land. Stop paying allegiance to ¹⁹  other gods. That will only bring about your ruin. ²⁰ 

Yehezkiel 22:7

22:7 They have treated father and mother with contempt ²¹  within you; they have oppressed the foreigner among you; they have wronged the orphan and the widow ²²  within you.

Matius 23:14

23:14 [[EMPTY]] ²³ 

[1:23]  ¹ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ² tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ³ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁴ sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).

[1:23]  ⁵ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ⁶ sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.

[3:14]  ⁷ tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[3:14]  ⁸ tn The pronominal element is masculine plural; the leaders are addressed.

[3:14]  ⁹ tn The verb בָּעַר (ba’ar, “graze, ruin”; HALOT 146 s.v. II בער) is a homonym of the more common בָּעַר (ba’ar, “burn”; see HALOT 145 s.v. I בער).

[3:14]  ¹⁰ sn The vineyard is a metaphor for the nation here. See 5:1-7.

[3:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the plunder of the poor [is] in your houses” (so NASB).

[5:7]  ¹² tn Or “For” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV).

[5:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “the house of Israel” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[5:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “men,” but in a generic sense.

[5:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “but, look, disobedience.” The precise meaning of מִשְׂפָּח (mishpakh), which occurs only here in the OT, is uncertain. Some have suggested a meaning “bloodshed.” The term is obviously chosen for its wordplay value; it sounds very much like מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, “justice”). The sound play draws attention to the point being made; the people have not met the Lord’s expectations.

[5:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “but, look, a cry for help.” The verb (“he waited”) does double duty in the parallelism. צְעָקָה (tsa’qah) refers to the cries for help made by the oppressed. It sounds very much like צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah, “fairness”). The sound play draws attention to the point being made; the people have not met the Lord’s expectations.

[7:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Stop oppressing foreigner, orphan, and widow.”

[7:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Stop shedding innocent blood.”

[7:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “going/following after.” See the translator’s note at 2:5 for an explanation of the idiom involved here.

[7:6]  ²⁰ tn Heb “going after other gods to your ruin.”

[22:7]  ²¹ tn Heb “treated lightly, cursed.”

[22:7]  ²² tn Widows and orphans are often coupled together in the OT (Deut 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:19-21; 26:12-13; Jer 7:6; 22:3). They represented all who were poor and vulnerable to economic exploitation.

[23:14]  ²³ tc The most important mss (א B D L Z Θ Ë¹ 33 892* pc and several versional witnesses) do not have 23:14 “Woe to you experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You devour widows’ property, and as a show you pray long prayers! Therefore you will receive a more severe punishment.” Part or all of the verse is contained (either after v. 12 or after v. 13) in W 0102 0107 ˹³ Ï and several versions, but it is almost certainly not original. The present translation follows NA²⁷ in omitting the verse number as well, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations. Note also that Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47 are very similar in wording and are not disputed textually.