Learn to {z} do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

(z) This kind of reasoning by the second table, the scriptures use in many places against the hypocrites who pretend holiness and religion in word, but when charity and love for their brethren should appear they declare that they have neither faith nor religion.

Wesley's Notes

1:17 Learn - Begin to live soberly, righteously, and godly. Judgment - Shew your religion to God, by practising justice to men. Judge - Defend and deliver them.

King James Translators' Notes

relieve: or, righten

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

17. seek judgment-justice, as magistrates, instead of seeking bribes (Jer 22:3, 16).

judge-vindicate (Ps 68:5; Jas 1:27).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

1:16-20 Not only feel sorrow for the sin committed, but break off the practice. We must be doing, not stand idle. We must be doing the good the Lord our God requires. It is plain that the sacrifices of the law could not atone, even for outward national crimes. But, blessed be God, there is a Fountain opened, in which sinners of every age and rank may be cleansed. Though our sins have been as scarlet and crimson, a deep dye, a double dye, first in the wool of original corruption, and afterwards in the many threads of actual transgression; though we have often dipped into sin, by many backslidings; yet pardoning mercy will take out the stain, Ps 51:7. They should have all the happiness and comfort they could desire. Life and death, good and evil, are set before us. O Lord, incline all of us to live to thy glory.