Isaiah 1:17

Take pleasure in well-doing; let your ways be upright, keep down the cruel, give a right decision for the child who has no father, see to the cause of the widow.

Bible in Basic English

In The King James Version

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

In Context

16Be washed, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; let there be an end of sinning;

18Come now, and let us have an argument together, says the Lord: how may your sins which are red like blood be white as snow? how may their dark purple seem like wool?

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Cross References

Psalms 82:3Give ear to the cause of the poor and the children without fathers; let those who are troubled and in need have their rights.

Proverbs 21:3To do what is right and true is more pleasing to the Lord than an offering.

Isaiah 1:23Your chiefs have gone against the Lord, they have become friends of thieves; every one of them is looking for profit and going after rewards; they do not give right decisions for the child who has no father, and they do not let the cause of the widow come before them.

Jeremiah 22:3This is what the Lord has said: Do what is right, judging uprightly, and make free from the hands of the cruel one him whose goods have been violently taken away: do no wrong and be not violent to the man from a strange country and the child without a father and the widow, and let not those who have done no wrong be put to death in this place.

Ezekiel 22:7In you they have had no respect for father and mother; in you they have been cruel to the man from a strange land; in you they have done wrong to the child without a father and to the widow.

Daniel 4:27For this cause, O King, let my suggestion be pleasing to you, and let your sins be covered by righteousness and your evil-doing by mercy to the poor, so that the time of your well-being may be longer.

Matthew Henry on Isaiah 1:17-21

A Call to Repentance; Repentance and Reformation Urged. ( b. c. 738.) 16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the… Read the whole commentary →

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