What does the Bible say about child abandonment?

Top passages, ranked by readers

Rankings: OpenBible.info Topical Bible (CC BY) · Scripture: World English Bible

• 1 Timothy 5:8

  But if anyone doesn't provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.

• Mark 9:42

  Whoever will cause one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if he was thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around his neck.

• Isaiah 49:15

  Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

• Ephesians 6:4

  You fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

• Psalms 68:5

  A father of the fatherless, and a defender of the widows, Is God in his holy habitation.

• Titus 3:10-11

  [10] Avoid a factious man after a first and second warning; [11] knowing that such a one is perverted, and sins, being self-condemned.

• Revelation 2:4

  But I have this against you, that you left your first love.

• Isaiah 49:15-25

  [15] Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you. [16] Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. [17] Your children make haste; your destroyers and those who made you waste shall go forth from you. [18] Lift up your eyes round about, and see: all these gather themselves together, and come to you. As I live, says Yahweh, you shall surely clothe you with them all as with an ornament, and gird yourself with them, like a bride. [19] For, as for your waste and your desolate places, and your land that has been destroyed, surely now shall you be too small for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up shall be far away. [20] The children of your bereavement shall yet say in your ears, The place is too small for me; give place to me that I may dwell. [21] Then shall you say in your heart, Who has conceived these for me, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering back and forth? and who has brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they? [22] Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and set up my ensign to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. [23] Kings shall be your nursing fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers: they shall bow down to you with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of your feet; and you shall know that I am Yahweh; and those who wait for me shall not be disappointed. [24] Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captives be delivered? [25] But thus says Yahweh, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered; for I will contend with him who contends with you, and I will save your children.

• Ephesians 4:14

  that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error;

• Deuteronomy 31:6

  Be strong and of good courage, don't be afraid, nor be scared of them: for Yahweh your God, he it is who does go with you; he will not fail you, nor forsake you.

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