Job 5:4

4 Now his children have no safe place, and they are crushed before the judges, for no one takes up their cause.

Job 5:4 Meaning and Commentary

Job 5:4

His children are far from safety
From outward safety, from evils and dangers, to which they are liable and exposed, not only from men, who hate them for their father's sake, who have been oppressors of them, or from God, who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children; and from spiritual and eternal safety or "salvation", or from salvation in the world to come, as the Targum, they treading in their fathers steps, and imitating their actions:

and they are crushed in the gate;
or openly, publicly, as Aben Ezra and others; or in the courts of judicature whither they are brought by those their parents had oppressed, and where they are cast, and have no favour shown them; or literally by the falling of the gate upon them; and perhaps some reference is had to Job's children being crushed in the gate or door of the house, through which they endeavoured to get when it fell upon them and destroyed them; the Targum is,

``and are crushed in the gates of hell, in the day of the great judgment:''

neither [is there] any to deliver [them];
neither God nor man, they having no interest in either, or favour with, partly on account of their father's ill behaviour, and partly on account of their own; and sad is the case of men when it is such, see ( Psalms 50:21 ) .

Job 5:4 In-Context

2 For wrath is the cause of death to the foolish, and he who has no wisdom comes to his end through passion.

3 I have seen the foolish taking root, but suddenly the curse came on his house.

4 Now his children have no safe place, and they are crushed before the judges, for no one takes up their cause.

5 Their produce is taken by him who has no food, and their grain goes to the poor, and he who is in need of water gets it from their spring.

6 For evil does not come out of the dust, or trouble out of the earth;