Bible Strands
Jeremiah 49:11
Abandon your orphans; I will preserve their lives. Let your widows trust in Me.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses a nation facing total military defeat, shifting from describing their stripping bare to promising direct intervention in their domestic collapse.
The words — The imperative עָזְבָ֥ה (‘a.ze.Va/h) literally commands to "leave" or abandon, paired with אֲחַיֶּ֑ה ('a.chai.Yeh), which means "I will preserve alive."
The thread — This divine care for orphans and widows echoes in Psalms 68:5, which identifies God as their defender, and James 1:27, which defines pure religion as caring for them in distress.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that human systems fail when stripped bare, requiring the reader to place practical reliance on God’s preservation rather than on military or economic security.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me.
Cross-references
- Psalms 68:5 A father of the fatherless and a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation.
- Hosea 14:3 Assyria will not save us, nor will we ride on horses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods!’ to the work of our own hands. For in You the fatherless find compassion.”
- James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
- 1 Timothy 5:5 The widow who is truly in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day in her petitions and prayers.
- Deuteronomy 10:18 He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing.
- Psalms 82:3 Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; uphold the rights of the afflicted and oppressed.
- Psalms 146:9 The LORD protects foreigners; He sustains the fatherless and the widow, but the ways of the wicked He frustrates.
- Proverbs 23:10 Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless,
- Jonah 4:11 So should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well?”
- Malachi 3:5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,” says the LORD of Hosts.