Job 5:4

4 Their children are far from safety, they are crushed in the gate, and there is no one to deliver them.

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 Surely vexation kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple.
3 I have seen fools taking root, but suddenly I cursed their dwelling.
4 Their children are far from safety, they are crushed in the gate, and there is no one to deliver them.
5 The hungry eat their harvest, and they take it even out of the thorns; and the thirsty pant after their wealth.
6 For misery does not come from the earth, nor does trouble sprout from the ground;
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.