A bereaved person
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The Hebrew noun yathom identifies a fatherless child or orphan, a person bereaved of a household protector in the social world of ancient Israel. Scripture consistently places the yathom among those exposed to economic, legal, and physical exploitation.
Reader summary
Full entry for יָתוֹם (H3490) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun yathom identifies a fatherless child or orphan, a person bereaved of a household protector in the social world of ancient Israel. Scripture consistently places the yathom among those exposed to economic, legal, and physical exploitation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 42 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the fatherless (18), of the fatherless (6), and fatherless (2), or the fatherless (2), orphans (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 22:22. Its strongest book concentrations include Deuteronomy (11), Psalms (8), Job (7), Isaiah (4).
The Hebrew noun yathom identifies a fatherless child or orphan, a person bereaved of a household protector in the social world of ancient Israel. Scripture consistently places the yathom among those exposed to economic, legal, and physical exploitation. The Lord executes justice and provides food and clothing; Israel must not deny justice, take needed security, seize property, or use violence; harvest, tithe, and feast provisions include fatherless children rather than isolating them from community life.
Prophets judge rulers who ignore their plea, and the Psalms call God their Father and defender. This language centers vulnerability without reducing bereaved children to passive symbols. Responsible teaching recognizes grief, changing family structures, and the agency of children and surviving caregivers. It must not romanticize orphanhood, pressure families into adoption, advertise children's stories, or imply that loss proves divine displeasure.
Care requires safeguarding, trauma-aware support, stable material provision, lawful child-protection practice, and respect for kinship, culture, identity, consent, and the child's developing voice.
Yathom names fatherless or orphaned people whose bereavement increases exposure to legal, economic, and physical harm. Covenant faithfulness provides food, inclusion, justice, property protection, defense from violence, and communal belonging.
He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing.
God executes justice for fatherless children and widows while providing food and clothing for foreigners.
Do not deny justice to the foreigner or the fatherless, and do not take a widow’s cloak as security.
Israel must not deny justice to a fatherless child or seize a widow's necessary cloak as security.
Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow.”
Learning to do right includes seeking justice, correcting oppression, and defending fatherless children.
This is what the Lord says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Do not shed innocent blood in this place.
Judah's rulers are commanded to administer justice and do no violence to fatherless children or other vulnerable neighbors.
The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast; the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.
Job's protest exposes creditors seizing a fatherless infant from the breast as security for debt.
A father of the fatherless and a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation.
God is confessed as Father to the fatherless and defender of widows from His holy habitation.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Orphan denoting child bereft of father; OT's paradigmatic figure of vulnerability requiring covenant protection
Orphan denoting child bereft of father; OT's paradigmatic figure of vulnerability requiring covenant protection
a bereaved person BDB: orphan Usage: fatherless (child), orphan.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 42 lexical occurrence verses.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Yathom reveals how bereavement and power interact. Deuteronomy 10 begins with God's own justice and provision, then Deuteronomy 24 forbids denying legal protection or taking property needed for survival. Torah also includes fatherless people in harvest access, tithes, and communal feasts, indicating both material provision and belonging. Isaiah 1 makes their defense evidence of learning to do right, while Jeremiah 22 commands rulers not merely to feel concern but to prevent wrong and violence.
Job 24 names a horrifying form of debt exploitation: a fatherless infant is taken from the breast as security. The text demands protection of child and caregiver rather than admiration of the creditor's legal claim. Psalm 68 names God as Father and defender, grounding hope without pretending that human obligations disappear. Faithful application supports surviving families, prevents property theft, employs screened and accountable caregivers, follows reporting laws, preserves safe kinship when possible, and gives children age-appropriate voice.
It rejects fundraising spectacle, savior narratives, forced adoption, and any religious access to children that bypasses consent and safeguarding.
Deut.10.18
Yathom is a masculine Hebrew noun used in singular and plural forms for a fatherless child or orphan. Its repeated pairing with widows and foreigners reflects exposure within ancient household and inheritance structures, not a claim that all bereaved people have identical circumstances.
James identifies care for orphans and widows in distress as pure religion and also condemns partiality. Jesus welcomes children and warns severely against causing little ones to stumble, strengthening the church's duty of care without creating unaccountable religious access.