What Does Deuteronomy 10:18 Mean?
He executes judgment for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him bread and a cloak.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.THE KEY
Here, love becomes visible as provision: God loves the stranger by putting bread and clothing within reach.
THE MEANING
When family protection or settled belonging is absent, divine justice still sees the exposed person. Love meets the stranger in concrete necessities: food to eat and clothing to wear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that someone without family protection or settled belonging falls outside God’s attention: the verse places them within justice and makes their needs the object of love.
THE ROOT
לָתֵת
latet
GROWS FROM
נ־ת־ן
Give, set, place.
The word for giving grows from a root that also means setting or placing. The food and clothing are not abstract goodwill; they are provision placed into someone’s need.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
This is the verb behind “giving,” tying love to the act of placing provision in another’s hands.
mattanah: Gift, present.
מַתָּנָה
The same root names a gift, showing how the stranger’s food and clothing arrive as concrete gifts.
גֵּר
gēr
GROWS FROM
ג־ו־ר
Sojourn, dwell as a resident stranger.
“sojourner” in this verse is gēr. “Stranger” can sound like someone entirely unknown, while gēr names someone who lives among others without settled belonging. Its root also means to sojourn, so the verse’s love reaches a person whose place among others remains precarious.
ALSO GROWS
gur: Sojourn, dwell as a resident stranger.
גּוּר
The verb shares the stranger’s root and reveals the unsettled dwelling carried inside the word.
megurim: Sojournings, places of sojourning.
מְגוּרִים
This related word carries the same root into the experience of dwelling away from one’s settled place.
מִשְׁפָּט
mishpāṭ
GROWS FROM
שׁ־פ־ט
Judge, decide a case, govern.
The Hebrew says that God does justice for the fatherless and widow: judgment is something done on their behalf. The root also names the act of judging and the judge, holding the decision and its responsible agent together.
ALSO GROWS
shaphat: Judge, decide a case.
שָׁפַט
The verb behind judgment makes justice an active response to a person’s case.
shofet: Judge.
שֹׁפֵט
The person-word from the same root links justice to someone who takes responsibility for the vulnerable person’s case.
THE PATTERN
Divine justice recognizes people left exposed and takes form as the care that sustains them.
The LORD guards the sojourners. He upholds the fatherless and the widow. But the way of the wicked he makes crooked.Learn to do good. Seek justice, straighten the crushed, judge the fatherless, contend for the widow.Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
The LORD guards the sojourners. He upholds the fatherless and the widow. But the way of the wicked he makes crooked.The Hebrew word translated “stranger” here appears again as “strangers” in the Psalm, beside the fatherless and widow. The repeated wording shows justice and love converging on those left without settled protection or belonging.
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