Ver. 18. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow— See Exodus 22:22. God may be said to execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, not only by taking them under the especial care of his providence, but by implanting compassion in the human breast; which, as his voice, calls upon men to protect the orphan, to assist the widow, to relieve the distressed. See James 1:27. The laws of hospitality are wisely and strongly inculcated in the sacred writings. The providence of God, which extends to all, is peculiarly attentive to strangers; to such as are either driven unjustly from their own country, or who travel, for good reasons, into other countries. Neither proselytes of justice, nor those of the gate, are here meant; but strangers in general, according to the utmost latitude of the word; and the motives, by which this regard to strangers is enforced upon the children of Israel, are certainly the strongest and most affecting possible. The wisest and best men among the heathens considered love to strangers as one of the characteristics of divinity. The Ζευς ξενιος, god of strangers, was the peculiar attribute of Jupiter, their supreme deity, benign to mankind, and the patron of universal benevolence. Hence, among other laws of Charondas, mentioned by Stobaeus, this is one, "to receive every stranger with kindness and humanity, and send them away in peace, in reverence to Jupiter, the god of strangers, who is as a god to all in common, and a narrow inspector of those who obey or violate the laws of hospitality." To the same purpose are many beautiful sentiments in Homer; as where Eumaeus says to Ulysses, disguised as a beggar,
It never was our guise To slight the poor, or aught humane despise; For Jove unfolds the hospitable door, 'Tis Jove that sends the stranger and the poor. See Odyss. 14: ver. 65-69 and Mr. Pope's note.
There is a remarkable letter of the emperor Julian, preserved by Sozomen in his Eccles. Hist. and in Julian's works, in which he speaks in the most honourable terms of the excellence and superiority of the Christian hospitality.