"Widows, orphans and strangers”: that’s code in Scripture for the three most vulnerable groups within a society at any given time. And both the great Jewish prophets and Jesus himself assure us that ultimately we will be judged by how we treated these while we were alive.
It’s interesting to look at any given book in the Bible and ask this question: “What did the author of this book consider as the very essence of religion?” You’ll get different answers. If you had asked that question of the authors of Exodus, Deuteronomy or Numbers, they would have answered that what was central to their faith was proper religious practice, keeping the Commandments and being faithful to the other prescribed codes of their time.
