Son of Pain

Sara Japhet (I and II Chronicles) notes the “unusual” structure of the etiological story behind the name “Jabez” in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Typically, “an aetiology offers an explanation for a given datum (commonly, but not always, a name) by recounting the causes from which it arose and demonstrating a positive connection between datum and causes” (109).

The brief story of Jabez does the opposite, since “its core is contradictory rather than causal.” He receives a name that puns with the root verb for “pain” (Heb, ‘tzb), but there is a “discrepancy between the actual pronunciation of the name and its presumed root.” The consonants of the word are reversed to produce the name “Jabez.” an effort, Japhet thinks, to ward off the danger of the etymology. A man whose name directly alluded to the pain of his birth might be in for a hard life (109).

But the reversal in the story is more general than the inversion of the spelling. A man named “Jabez,” named by his mother who labored in pain over him, us surprisingly described as “more honorable than his brothers” (v. 9) and is said to have a prosperous life. How can this be? How did he escape the “fate” of his name? “Irrevocably burdened with a name which was determined by his mother’s experience and is now to determine his own fate, Jabez takes the only possible step: a prayer to his God. God’s power alone is superior to and more effective than the potency of the name, and it may be activated by acknowledgement in prayer. The latent force in the name is not denied, but is subordinated to the mightier power of God.” Having been “called” (qara) Jabez, his only hope is to “call” (qara) on the God of Israel (110).

The story makes for an intriguing diversion from the genealogy in its own right, but one of Japhet’s textual notes points to its wider import. The word “in pain” alludes to Genesis 3:16, the curse that Eve’s pain would be multiplied: “in pain you shall bring forth children” (109). Jabez is a child of Eve, a child of curse; the name he inherits from his mother names the curse of his origin. There is nothing but pain in his ancestry, but God makes a new future, answering Jabez’s prayer for blessing, for an enlarged border, for God’s hand to be with him, for deliverance from the pain of his birth, the pain of the primordial curse.

Jabez’s prayer is thus set between origin and eschaton. In the context of Chronicles, it’s a small glimpse of the fulfillment of Yahweh’s commitment to bring Israel from the “pain” of her exile, through the pain of her new birth, into an enlarged space, blessed and guided by the hand of God. And in the larger canonical context, Jabez stands for Adamic humanity as a whole, born of pain but destined by the merciful power of God to become a new humanity in the last Adam.