Job 5:4

4 Let their children be far from safety, and let them be crushed at the doors of vile men, and let there be no deliverer.

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 destroys the foolish one, and envy slays him that has gone astray.

3 And I have seen foolish ones taking root: but suddenly their habitation was devoured.

4 Let their children be far from safety, and let them be crushed at the doors of vile men, and let there be no deliverer.

5 For what they have collected, the just shall eat; but they shall not be delivered out of calamities: let their strength be utterly exhausted.

6 For labour cannot by any means come out of the earth, nor shall trouble spring out of the mountains: