Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary

Adam Clarke Commentary

If his children be multiplied - As numerous families were supposed to be a proof of the benediction of the Almighty, Job shows that this is not always the case; for the offspring of the wicked shall be partly cut off by violent deaths, and partly reduced to great poverty.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword - That is, they shall be slain in war. The first calamities which it is here said would come upon a man, relate to his family Job 27:14-18; the next are those that would come upon himself, Job 27:19-23. All the sentiments here expressed are found in the various speeches of the friends of Job, and, according to the interpretation suggested above, this is designed to represent their sentiments. They maintained that if a wicked man was blessed with a numerous family, and seemed to be prosperous, it was only that the punishment might come the more heavily upon him, for that they certainly would be cut off; see Job 18:19-20; Job 20:10.

And his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread - This sentiment was advanced by Zophar, Job 20:10; see the notes at that verse.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

If his children be multiplied,.... As it is possible they may; this is one external blessing common to good men and bad men. Haman, that proud oppressor, left ten sons behind him, and wicked Ahab had seventy, Esther 9:12,

it is for the sword; for them that kill with the sword, as the Targum; to be killed with it, as in the two instances above; Haman's ten sons were slain by the sword of the Jews, Esther 9:13, and Ahab's seventy sons by the sword of Jehu, or those he ordered to slay them, 2 Kings 10:7. The children of such wicked persons are oftentimes put to death, either by the sword of the enemy, fall in battle in an hostile way, which is one of God's four sore judgments, Ezekiel 14:21; or, leading a most wicked life, commit such capital crimes as bring them into the hand of the civil magistrate, who bears not the sword in vain, but is the minister of God, a revengeful executioner of wrath on wicked men; or else they die by the sword of the murderer, being brought into the world for such, and through their riches become their prey, Hosea 9:13; or if neither of these is the case, yet they at last, let them prosper as they will, fall a sacrifice to the glittering sword of divine justice, whetted and drawn in wrath against them; the sword of the enemy seems chiefly intended:

and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread; such of them as die not by the sword shall perish by famine, which is another of God's sore judgments; though this may respect the grandchildren of wicked men, whom God visits to the third and fourth generation; the Targum paraphrases it, his children's children, and so Sephorno; to which agrees the Vulgate Latin version: the sense is, that the posterity of such wicked men, when they are dead and gone, shall be so reduced as to beg their bread, and shall not have a sufficiency of that for the support of nature, but shall die for want of food.

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

His family only increases to perish by sword or famine (Jeremiah 18:21; Job 5:20, the converse).

John Trapp Complete Commentary

Job 27:14 If his children be multiplied, [it is] for the sword: and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread.

Ver. 14. If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword] As were Ahab’s seventy sons, for instance, 2 Kings 10:1, whom he had begotten after God had threatened to root out his posterity. He, therefore, as it were to cross the Almighty, gives himself so much the more strenuously to the work of generation; but this was (like Ephraim) to bring forth children to the murderer, Hosea 4:13. See the like of Ahaziah and his forty-two brethren slain at the shearing house. [2 Kings 10:14]

And his offspring] Heb. His issues, or egressions, his shoots or branches, his pledges: so Mercer rendereth it.

Shall not be satisfied with bread] i.e. Shall be pined and famished, which their wicked parents, by heaping and hoarding, sought to prevent, but it could not be. And this shall be a more cruel kind of death than the former, Lamentations 4:9. Drusus, the son of Tiberius Nero, was put to this death; so was our Richard II, at Pomfret Castle; Sanders, that traitor in Ireland; and many others.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

It is for the sword; that they may be cut off by the sword, either of war or of justice.

Shall not be satisfied with bread; shall be starved, or want necessaries. A figure called meiosis.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Strophe b — Having fully established his main position, that the virtuous may suffer, for instance as in his case, (2-10,) Job proceeds to give in detail the sufferings of a portion of the wicked in this present life. In admitting the sufferings of some of the wicked, he magnanimously proffers a ground of conciliation, with an implied condition that the friends should also admit the sufferings of the righteous, which they in the obstinacy of silence fail to do, Job 27:14-18.

14.His children — Calamity hangs over his home also; his children perish, too, some by war and some by famine. Job’s glowing description of a godless family in Job 21:8, he now qualifies by declaring their doom. It is painfully natural that desolate Job should first speak of the children of the wicked.

George Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

CHAPTER XXVII.

Bread. Septuagint, "if they grow up to manhood, they shall beg," Psalm xxxvi 25. (Haydock)

E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes

children = sons.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

children

21:11,12; Deuteronomy 28:32,41; 2 Kings 9:7,8; 10:6-10; Esther 5:11; 9:5-10; Psalms 109:13; Hosea 9:13,14; Luke 23:29

his offspring

1 Samuel 2:5