Job 5:4

4 His sons shall be made far from health, and they shall be defouled in the gate, and there shall be none that shall deliver them. (Yea, his sons shall be made far from help, and they shall be reviled in the court, and there shall be no one who shall save 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 Wrathfulness slayeth a fond man, and envy slayeth a little child. (Anger killeth the foolish, and envy killeth the childish.)
3 I saw a fool with [a] steadfast root, and I cursed his fairness anon (and at once I cursed his dwelling place).
4 His sons shall be made far from health, and they shall be defouled in the gate, and there shall be none that shall deliver them. (Yea, his sons shall be made far from help, and they shall be reviled in the court, and there shall be no one who shall save them.)
5 Whose ripe corn an hungry man shall eat, and an armed man shall ravish him, and they, that thirst, shall drink his riches. (A hungry man shall eat his harvest, and an armed man shall rob him, and they, who thirst, shall drink his riches.)
6 Nothing is done in [the] earth without cause, and sorrow shall not go out of the earth, that is, adversity befalleth not to any man without cause. (Nothing is done on the earth without a reason, and trouble groweth not out of the earth, that is, adversity befalleth not to anyone without a reason.)
Copyright © 2001 by Terence P. Noble. For personal use only.