They. — Not the sons. There is here one of the sudden changes of number in which Hebrew poetry abounds. (See especially Psalms 107:43.) Parents who have large families of sons are evidently intended. From the figure of the warrior and the arrows we should expect here, too, a martial image. They shall not be discomfited, but they shall challenge their enemies in the gates. In illustration may be quoted:
“Therefore men pray to have around their hearth,
Obedient offspring, to requite their foes
With harm, and honour whom their father loves;
But he whose issue is unprofitable,
Begets what else but sorrow to himself,
And store of laughter to his enemies?”
SOPH.: Antig., 641
On the other hand, it is the habit of Hebrew poetry to accumulate metaphors, and the gate is so commonly spoken of as the place of public resort, where legal cases were decided (Isaiah 29:21; Amos 5:12, &c), that it is quite as likely that the allusion here is to the support which a man’s just cause would receive when evidently backed up by a long retinue of stalwart sons. This view certainly receives support from Job 5:4, where we have the very opposite picture of a tyrant’s sons, not only unable to support their father, but themselves “crushed in the gate;” and the phrase “speak with their enemies” in this same verse may be illustrated from Joshua 20:4; Jeremiah 12:1.