His {e} children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the {f} gate, neither is there any to deliver them.

(e) Though God sometimes allows the father's to pass in this world, yet his judgments will light on their wicked children.

(f) By public judgment they will be condemned and no one will pity them.

Wesley's Notes

5:4 Children - Whose greatness he designed in all his enterprizes, supposing his family would be established for ever. Safely - Are exposed to dangers and calamities, and can neither preserve themselves, nor the inheritance which their fathers left them. There is no question but he glances here, at the death of Job's children.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

4. His children . crushed in the gate-A judicial formula. The gate was the place of judgment and of other public proceedings (Ps 127:5; Pr 22:22; Ge 23:10; De 21:19). Such propylæa have been found in the Assyrian remains. Eliphaz obliquely alludes to the calamity which cut off Job's children.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-5 Eliphaz here calls upon Job to answer his arguments. Were any of the saints or servants of God visited with such Divine judgments as Job, or did they ever behave like him under their sufferings? The term, saints, holy, or more strictly, consecrated ones, seems in all ages to have been applied to the people of God, through the Sacrifice slain in the covenant of their reconciliation. Eliphaz doubts not that the sin of sinners directly tends to their ruin. They kill themselves by some lust or other; therefore, no doubt, Job has done some foolish thing, by which he has brought himself into this condition. The allusion was plain to Job's former prosperity; but there was no evidence of Job's wickedness, and the application to him was unfair and severe.