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1 Chronicles4:9–10

The Prayer of Jabez

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1 Chronicles 4:9–10 — The Prayer of Jabez. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

9

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

ya‘·bêṣ way·hî niḵ·bāḏ mê·’e·ḥāw wə·’im·mōw qā·rə·’āh šə·mōw ya‘·bêṣ lê·mōr kî yā·laḏ·tî bə·‘ō·ṣeḇ

Word by word12 · parsed
יַעְבֵּ֔ץya‘·bêṣNow JabezH3258
√ Yaʻbêts — Jabets, the name of an Israelite, and also of a place in PalestineNounpropermasculine singular
וַיְהִ֣יway·hîwasH1961
√ hâyâh — to exist, iConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
hâyâh: to exist, to come to be The waw consecutive opens the fragment as narrative, not as another register entry. K&D treat vv. 8 to 10 as “a fragment, the connection of which with the sons of Judah mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2 is not clear.” The verb is the hinge on which a name-list becomes a story.
נִכְבָּ֖דniḵ·bāḏmore honorableH3513
√ kâbad — to be heavy, iVerbNifalParticiplemasculine singular
kâbad: to be heavy, weighty Nifal participle: weight conferred, not seized. Ellicott and K&D independently send the reader to Genesis 34:19, where the same formula of honor is applied inside a narrative of violation; the Chronicler uses a neutral formula and lets the prayer, not the formula, supply the content. Henry concedes the gap: “We are not told upon what account Jabez was more honourable than his brethren.”
מֵאֶחָ֑יוmê·’e·ḥāwthan his brothersH251
√ ʼâch — a brother (used in the widest sense of literal relationship and metaphorical affinity or resemblance (like father))Preposition-mNounmasculine plural constructthird person masculine singular
ʼâch: a brother, in the widest sense The brothers are unnamed here and unnamed in v. 8. Poole places Jabez among “the fathers of the families of Aharhel last mentioned”; Ellicott and K&D both reason from the comparative that he must belong to the immediately preceding household, since a comparison needs a stated set to be compared against.
וְאִמּ֗וֹwə·’im·mōwHis motherH517
√ ʼêm — a mother (as the bond of the family)Conjunctive wawNounfeminine singular constructthird person masculine singular
Construct with 3ms suffix: the mother is named only by her relation to him.
קָרְאָ֨הqā·rə·’āhhad named himH7121
√ qârâʼ — to call out to (iVerbQalPerfectthird person feminine singular
qârâʼ: to call out to Qal perfect 3fs, read as pluperfect by Cambridge: “but his mother had called his name.” Mark the root: this is the same verb H7121 that opens v. 10, where Jabez calls on God. The woman’s naming call and the man’s praying call are one lexeme, and the prayer is his answer to her cry.
שְׁמ֤וֹšə·mōw. . .H8034
√ shêm — an appellation, as amark or memorial of individualityNounmasculine singular constructthird person masculine singular
יַעְבֵּץ֙ya‘·bêṣJabezH3258
√ Yaʻbêts — Jabets, the name of an Israelite, and also of a place in PalestineNounpropermasculine singular
Yaʻbêts: Jabez, a man and a place The name is a genuine philological problem, and the brief’s sources do not hide it. Pulpit: “No root corresponding to the characters of this name in present order is known,” and proposes a euphonic transposition from יַעְצֵב, “he causes pains.” Cambridge simply glosses it “He bringeth sorrow.” Either way the consonants of pain are shuffled inside the name, which is precisely what v. 10 prays to undo.
לֵאמֹ֔רlê·mōrsayingH559
√ ʼâmar — to say (used with great latitude)Preposition-lVerbQalInfinitive construct
Infinitive construct with lamed, the standard quotation formula: “to say.”
כִּ֥יkîBecauseH3588
√ kîy — (by implication) very widely used as a relative conjunction or adverb (as below)Conjunction
Causal conjunction introducing the etymology, a formula familiar from the birth notices of Genesis 29 and 30.
יָלַ֖דְתִּיyā·laḏ·tîI bore [him]H3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbQalPerfectfirst person common singular
yâlad: to bear young First person, perfect: the mother speaks in her own voice, the only words she is given in Scripture. Benson reads the naming as double memorial, “a memorandum to herself, to be thankful to God as long as she lived,” and a memorandum to the son that he was born into a vale of tears.
בְּעֹֽצֶב׃bə·‘ō·ṣeḇin painH6090
√ ʻôtseb — an idol (as fashioned)Preposition-bNounmasculine singular
ʻôtseb: pain, hurt; also an idol (as fashioned) A rare noun, 4 verses. Its two recorded senses sit strangely together: the pain of Isaiah 14:3 and Psalm 139:24, and the carved idol of Isaiah 48:5, both from a root meaning to carve or shape. What is shaped by hand and what hurts share a word. The mother shapes a name out of her hurt, and the name shapes the son until God unshapes it.
10

And Jabez called out to the God of Israel, “If only You would bless me and enlarge my territory! May Your hand be with me and keep me from harm, so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted the request of Jabez.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

ya‘·bêṣ way·yiq·rā lê·lō·hê yiś·rā·’êl lê·mōr ’im- bā·rêḵ tə·ḇā·ră·ḵê·nî wə·hir·bî·ṯā ’eṯ- gə·ḇū·lî yā·ḏə·ḵā wə·hā·yə·ṯāh ‘im·mî wə·‘ā·śî·ṯā mê·rā·‘āh lə·ḇil·tî ‘ā·ṣə·bî ’ĕ·lō·hîm ’ă·šer- way·yā·ḇê šā·’āl ’êṯ

Word by word23 · parsed
יַ֠עְבֵּץya‘·bêṣAnd JabezH3258
√ Yaʻbêts — Jabets, the name of an Israelite, and also of a place in PalestineNounpropermasculine singular
וַיִּקְרָ֣אway·yiq·rācalled outH7121
√ qârâʼ — to call out to (iConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
qârâʼ: to call out to The same lexeme H7121 that his mother used to fix his name on him in v. 9 is now the verb of his prayer. She called him pain; he calls on God. The fragment is built on that single repeated root, and the unit’s whole argument is the distance between its two uses.
לֵאלֹהֵ֨יlê·lō·hêto the GodH430
√ ʼĕlôhîym — gods in the ordinary sensePreposition-lNounmasculine plural construct
ʼĕlôhîym: God Construct plural, “to the God of.” Pulpit notices that the Chronicler is elsewhere in these chapters a Jehovah writer, and counts “the discriminating use of the words Elohim (ver. 10) of Israel” as evidence that the fragment is old and independent rather than composed for its present setting.
יִשְׂרָאֵ֜לyiś·rā·’êlof IsraelH3478
√ Yisrâʼêl — Jisrael, a symbolical name of JacobNounpropermasculine singular
Yisrâʼêl: Jisrael, the name given to Jacob Not a generic deity but the God bound by covenant to a named man. Ellicott compares Jacob’s altar El-elohe-Israel at Genesis 33:20 and his vow at Bethel, Genesis 28:20 to 22. Benson makes the same move devotionally: Jabez prays to “the God with whom Jacob wrestled and prevailed.” The address is itself an argument: a God who has bound himself may be asked.
לֵאמֹ֗רlê·mōr. . .H559
√ ʼâmar — to say (used with great latitude)Preposition-lVerbQalInfinitive construct
אִם־’im-If onlyH518
√ ʼim — used very widely as demonstrative, lo!Conjunction
ʼim: if A conditional, not a wish. Pulpit: “each succeeding clause of which has been under the rule of the initial ‘if,’ translated with us, Oh that.” The apodosis, the “then I will,” is never written. K&D and Ellicott both mark the silence, and Henry reads the silence generously: “he was afraid to promise in his own strength.”
בָּרֵ֨ךְbā·rêḵYou would bless meH1288
√ bârak — to kneelVerbPielInfinitive absolute
bârak: to kneel, to bless Infinitive absolute reinforcing the finite verb. The root’s primary sense is to kneel, and the posture is buried in the petition. What is asked is left deliberately unspecified: Benson notes he gives God “a blank paper, that he might write what he pleased.”
תְּבָרֲכֵ֜נִיtə·ḇā·ră·ḵê·nî. . .H1288
√ bârak — to kneelVerbPielImperfectsecond person masculine singularfirst person common singular
Piel imperfect with first person suffix, the finite verb the infinitive absolute intensifies.
וְהִרְבִּ֤יתָwə·hir·bî·ṯāand enlargeH7235
√ râbâh — to increase (in whatever respect)Conjunctive wawVerbHifilConjunctive perfectsecond person masculine singular
râbâh: to increase, in whatever respect Hifil: not “let it grow” but “cause it to become much.” The increase is God’s act, and the verb shifts to conjunctive perfect here, chaining this petition to the first as a single conditional clause rather than a new sentence.
אֶת־’eṯ-H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
גְּבוּלִי֙gə·ḇū·lîmy territoryH1366
√ gᵉbûwl — properly, a cord (as twisted), iNounmasculine singular constructfirst person common singular
gᵉbûwl: a boundary, properly a twisted cord Pulpit sends the reader to Deuteronomy 12:20 and 19:8, where the enlarging of the border is God’s own covenant promise. That is the honest defense against reading this as greed: Jabez asks for a thing God has already said he would do. Gill records the Targum’s spiritualizing gloss, “multiply my borders with disciples,” as a gloss and not as the text.
יָדְךָ֙yā·ḏə·ḵāMay Your handH3027
√ yâd — a hand (the open one (indicating power, means, direction, etcNounfeminine singular constructsecond person masculine singular
yâd: a hand, the open one, indicating power, means, direction Benson sets this petition against the blessing of Moses on Judah, whose prayer was “that his own hands might be sufficient for him,” and observes that Jabez expects no such thing without God’s hand with him. Pulpit gathers the parallels: Ezra 7:9, Psalm 80:17, Psalm 119:173, Psalm 139:5 and 10, Isaiah 42:6.
וְהָיְתָ֤הwə·hā·yə·ṯāhbeH1961
√ hâyâh — to exist, iConjunctive wawVerbQalConjunctive perfectthird person feminine singular
עִמִּ֔י‘im·mîwith meH5973
√ ʻim — adverb or preposition, with (iPrepositionfirst person common singular
Preposition with first person suffix: presence, not merely aid.
וְעָשִׂ֥יתָwə·‘ā·śî·ṯāand keep meH6213
√ ʻâsâh — to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest applicationConjunctive wawVerbQalConjunctive perfectsecond person masculine singular
ʻâsâh: to do or make, in the broadest sense The verb has no object here, which is why the clause is disputed. Cambridge judges the text defective and would supply “make room for me, and wouldest redeem me.” Poole keeps the received text and reads the mem as an accompaniment, “work with” the evil, that is, restrain and govern it. We record both and decide neither.
מֵּרָעָ֖הmê·rā·‘āhfrom harmH7451
√ raʻ — bad or (as noun) evil (natural or moral)Preposition-mAdjectivefeminine singular
raʻ: bad, or as a noun evil, natural or moral The word covers both harm suffered and wrong done, and the commentators split the difference rather than choose. Henry enumerates “the evil of sin, the evil of trouble, all the evil designs of his enemies.” Pulpit presses further: he does not pray to be spared all suffering, but from evil “its principle, its tyrannous, merciless hold.”
לְבִלְתִּ֣יlə·ḇil·tîso that I will be freeH1115
√ biltîy — properly, a failure of, iPreposition-l
biltîy: properly, a failure of; so as not With lamed, a negative purpose clause. A function word carrying the whole weight of the reversal: the last thing asked is that a thing should fail to happen.
עָצְבִּ֑י‘ā·ṣə·bîfrom painH6087
√ ʻâtsab — properly, to carve, iVerbQalInfinitive constructfirst person common singular
ʻâtsab: properly, to carve; hence to hurt, to grieve Infinitive construct with a first person suffix: “my paining.” The root is the verbal cognate of the noun ʻôtseb in v. 9, so the closing word of the prayer is the opening word of his name. Barnes states the petition exactly: “Grant that the grief implied in my name may not come upon me!”
אֱלֹהִ֖ים’ĕ·lō·hîmAnd GodH430
√ ʼĕlôhîym — gods in the ordinary senseNounmasculine plural
ʼĕlôhîym: God The narrator resumes with the same name Jabez addressed, and this is the only sentence in the fragment where God is the subject. Everything before it is speech; this is act.
אֲשֶׁר־’ă·šer-H834
√ ʼăsher — who, which, what, thatPronounrelative
וַיָּבֵ֥אway·yā·ḇêgrantedH935
√ bôwʼ — to go or come (in a wide variety of applications)Conjunctive wawVerbHifilConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
bôwʼ: to go or come, in a wide variety of applications Hifil, causative: Ellicott gives it literally as “and God brought (caused to come).” JFB draws the line the verb draws, that God “was not only the hearer, but the answerer of prayer.” Pulpit adds, with Keil, that the fragment’s grace lies precisely in ending on God’s readiness to answer rather than on the man’s unstated promise.
שָׁאָֽל׃šā·’ālthe requestH7592
√ shâʼal — to inquireVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
shâʼal: to inquire, to ask Qal perfect: the thing he asked, as a completed act. The clause is exactly coextensive with the prayer just recorded and adds nothing to it, which is the point. What arrived was what was asked, no more and no less.
אֵ֥ת’êṯof [Jabez]H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
Direct object marker before the relative clause: the object of God’s bringing is the request itself.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. A fragment that will not stay in the register — 4:9-4:10

✦ The sources are unanimous that this is an intrusion and disagree entirely about why. K&D open by calling 1 Chronicles 4:8 to 10 “a fragment, the connection of which with the sons of Judah mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2 is not clear,” and say of Jabez that “we know nothing beyond what is communicated” in these two verses. Barnes finds the abruptness remarkable and infers a lost source, known to the first readers “either by tradition, or by writings which have perished.” Pulpit rejects that solution by name and prefers instead that Chronicles “is not in its original complete state.” Cambridge simply concedes at the top of v. 9 that “The connexion of this verse also does not appear.” ⚙ Four scholars, four accounts, one agreed fact: the seam is real and nobody can close it. Pulpit’s image of the episode as an oasis in a desert of names is doing real exegetical work, because the surrounding chapters are a list of who descended from whom, and this is the one place in them where somebody speaks.

ii. The mother’s word: a name carved out of pain — 4:9

✦ The naming clause is given in the mother’s own voice, and it is a single causal sentence: כִּי יָלַדְתִּי בְּעֹצֶב, “because I bore in pain.” Ellicott sets it beside the birth notices of Genesis 29:32 to 35 and “especially Genesis 35:18,” and corrects the traditional rendering of the noun: “With sorrow. —Rather, pain.” Gill draws the Genesis 35 comparison to its conclusion in four words: “he was another Benoni.” Benson reads the name as a deliberate double memorial, a reminder to the mother to be thankful and a reminder to the son that he was born into a vale of tears, adding that the sorrow in his name “might serve to put a seriousness upon his spirit.” ⚙ The philology is genuinely unsettled and we will not paper over it: Pulpit states plainly that “No root corresponding to the characters of this name in present order is known,” and suggests the consonants of יַעְצֵב, “he causes pains,” have been transposed. Cambridge does not hedge at all and glosses the name “He bringeth sorrow.” So the name means pain either by etymology or by the mother’s own declared intent, and for the narrative it makes no difference which.

iii. A vow with its second half missing — 4:10

✦ The grammar of the prayer is a conditional, and the sources agree on this against most devotional English. Ellicott: “Literally, ‘if indeed thou wilt bless me.’” Geneva’s marginal note supplies what the Hebrew withholds: “It is to be understood that then he would accomplish his vow which he made.” K&D set out the whole structure, that only the conditions of the vow are given, “without the conclusion, Then I vow to do this or that.” Pulpit observes that every clause stands “under the rule of the initial ‘if.’” ⚙ The four petitions are then read consistently by Henry, Benson, Poole and Gill along the same axis: blessing indeed, the enlarged border, the hand, and keeping from evil. Where they differ is in altitude. Poole and JFB read the occasion as military, Poole paraphrasing “drive out these wicked and cursed Canaanites, whom thou hast commanded us to root out,” with JFB reconstructing “in all probability the expulsion of the Canaanites” as the undertaking. Gill spiritualizes throughout, taking the blessing as “covenant blessings, the sure mercies of David” and recording, as Targum and not as text, the gloss “multiply my borders with disciples.” Henry holds both: spiritual blessings are best, and the enlarging he wants is of the heart. ⚙ Note what the prayer never does: it never states what he will give in return, and it never says what the blessing is for. Benson’s image is the sharpest thing in the brief, that Jabez hands God “a blank paper, that he might write what he pleased.” Then the narrator ends the fragment not with the man’s vow but with God’s verb: וַיָּבֵא, He brought. Pulpit, following Keil, names this the greater grace of the passage.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ Read only against the rest of Scripture and not against the devotional industry that has grown up around these two verses, the fragment is not a formula for getting things. It is a story about a word spoken over a child by someone who loved him and meant it truthfully. His mother told the truth: bearing him hurt. She fixed that truth to him as a name he would answer to every day of his life, and Cambridge is right that the name was ill-omened. The man’s prayer is not a denial of her word and never contradicts it. He asks, in the last clause, only that the thing his name says should not become the thing his life is: לְבִלְתִּי עָצְבִּי, so that it may not be my pain. ⚙ We take the grammar seriously as the key: the prayer is a conditional whose “then” is never written down. Scripture preserves a vow with the man’s half blank. What it preserves instead is God’s half, one Hifil verb, He brought. If there is a doctrine here it is not that certain words unlock blessing; it is that a man whose own commitment is left unrecorded was heard anyway, and that what a person is called is not finally what a person is. K&D put the outcome better than we can, that God so fulfilled his wish “that his life became a contradiction of his name.” ⚙ Two honest limits on our own reading. First, we do not know what Jabez asked the border for, and the text’s refusal to say is not an invitation for us to fill it in. Second, the prayer was answered; that is stated. That it was answered because it was correctly worded is nowhere stated, and we decline to supply it. The line below is our own interpretive summary, offered to be tested. It is not a verse of Scripture.

His mother told the truth about his birth; God told a different truth about his life, and both stayed in the book.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

A man, or a town of scribes: the name Jabez in 1 Chronicles 2 verbal / quotation: confirmed

The proper noun יַעְבֵּץ (Yaʻbêts, H3258) occurs in only three verses in the whole canon, two of them here and one at 1 Chronicles 2:55, where it names a place in which “families of scribes dwelt.” ✦ The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme, so the verbal link is real; what the link means is not. K&D weigh it carefully and refuse to settle it: “whether our Jabez were father (lord) of this town cannot be determined.” Ellicott is willing to follow it further, suggesting that if the Sopherim of Jabez were writers, then Jabez “like Kirjath-sepher, was a place of books, and was honoured accordingly,” which would explain the honor of v. 9. Pulpit, having noted the same Bethlehem connection through Salma, judges it “not enough by a long way.” ⚙ We record the lexical identity as certain and the historical identification as open.

1 Chronicles 2:55

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3258 Yaʻbêts (in 3 vv), a rare proper noun occurring only at 1 Chronicles 2:55 and twice in this unit. The verbal identity is confirmed; the inference that man and place are the same is conjecture recorded by Ellicott and rejected as insufficient by Pulpit.

ʻôtseb: the rare noun for hurt, and for a thing hands have carved verbal / quotation: confirmed

The noun of v. 9, עֹצֶב (ʻôtseb, H6090), appears in only four verses. ✦ The Verifier gives all three of the others: Isaiah 14:3, where God gives rest from pain and turmoil; Psalm 139:24, the closing petition to be searched for any grievous way; and Isaiah 48:5, where the same noun means a carved idol. The lexicon explains the strange pairing, since the root sense is to carve or fashion: what human hands shape and what wounds are named with one word. ⚙ Read across the four, Jabez stands between Isaiah 14:3 and Psalm 139:24. He asks for the rest Isaiah announces, and the thing he asks to be kept from is the very thing the psalmist asks God to look for in him. The Isaiah 48:5 sense is not being invoked by the Chronicler, and we do not press it, but it is worth seeing that the word for a pain that was made and the word for a god that was made are the same word.

Isaiah 14:3 · Psalm 139:24 · Isaiah 48:5

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6090 ʻôtseb (in 4 vv). A rare noun, and these are all three of its other occurrences; the link is lexical, not a quotation, and no commentator in the brief draws it.

ʻâtsab: the verb of grief, from God’s heart to a father’s silence structural / thematic: confirmed

The prayer’s last word, עָצְבִּי (ʻâtsab, H6087), is the verbal cognate, spread across seventeen verses. ✦ The Verifier supplies the range: Genesis 6:6, where God himself is grieved to his heart; Genesis 34:7, the grief of Jacob’s sons; Genesis 45:5, Joseph telling his brothers not to be grieved; 1 Kings 1:6, the father who “had never rebuked him at any time” (literally, never grieved him); and Nehemiah 8:10 and 11, where the people are told not to grieve on a holy day. ⚙ This is a common word and we claim nothing more than a shared motif: the canon uses one root for the pain God feels, the pain a family inflicts, and the pain a father withholds. Jabez asks to be outside its reach. Note that 1 Kings 1:6 shows the darker possibility, a son never grieved and ruined by it.

Genesis 6:6 · Genesis 34:7 · 1 Kings 1:6 · Nehemiah 8:10

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6087 ʻâtsab (in 17 vv). Too frequent to carry a verbal claim, so recorded as a real lexical link inside a shared motif of grief, not as an allusion.

The vow form of Bethel, with the promise left blank structural / thematic: confirmed

✦ Three independent sources in the brief send this prayer to the same place. K&D cite Genesis 28:20 for the structure of a vow whose conclusion is suppressed. Ellicott cites Genesis 28:20 to 22 and supplies the missing clause in brackets, “then will I serve thee.” Pulpit names the pattern outright: “This well-known Hebrew form of prayer supposes a solemn engagement, and that the answered prayer shall meet with the fulfilment of a vowed promise on the part of the suppliant, according to the pattern of Genesis 28:20.” Ellicott and K&D further tie the address “the God of Israel” to Jacob’s altar at Genesis 33:20. ⚙ The difference is the whole point: Jacob’s vow states its “then,” and Jabez’s does not. What Genesis records as a bargain, Chronicles records as a request.

Genesis 28:20 · Genesis 33:20 · Genesis 35:18

basis: The Verifier computes no shared lexeme for this pair, so no verbal claim is made. The basis is the vow form itself, cited independently for this verse by K&D, Ellicott and Pulpit, each naming Genesis 28:20; Genesis 33:20 and 35:18 are cited by Ellicott and K&D for the divine title and the naming pattern.

Asking according to His will: Gill’s own cross-Testament appeal structural / thematic: confirmed

✦ Gill closes his note on v. 10 by generalizing the last clause and citing 1 John 5:14: God grants “whatever is asked in faith, according to his will, and will make for his glory, and the good of his people.” JFB reaches the same conclusion from the narrative alone, that God here “proved that He was not only the hearer, but the answerer of prayer.” ⚙ This is a Hebrew to Greek link and therefore cannot rest on a shared Strong’s number; no lexical basis exists or could exist. What connects them is a structural claim about how petition works, and it is Gill who makes it, not the Chronicler. We would add the caution the Chronicler’s own silence supplies: the text never says why this prayer was granted, and John’s condition, “according to his will,” is precisely what the fragment declines to spell out.

1 John 5:14

basis: Cross-Testament Hebrew to Greek: no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and none is claimed. The basis is a structural claim about answered petition, made explicitly by Gill, who cites 1 John 5:14 at this verse.

Jabez as Othniel: a Targumic identification the sources will not carry flagged: verify source

✦ Geneva’s marginal note states flatly that Jabez was “Otherwise called Othniel, Jud 1:13.” Cambridge reports the same, that “according to Targ. (on 1 Chronicles 4:13) Jabez = Othniel, the nephew of Caleb.” Gill reports it and rejects it: that he was Othniel, “as say the Targumist and other Jewish writers, is not probable, and besides is after spoken of distinct from him, 1 Chronicles 4:13.” JFB reports a related rabbinic tradition, that Jabez “was an eminent doctor in the law,” and Pulpit traces the probable origin of that tradition to a desire to connect the man with the scribal town of 1 Chronicles 2:55. ⚙ Flagged, not endorsed. The provenance is a single post-biblical translation tradition; one source in the brief repeats it without comment, one reports it neutrally, and two argue against it from the text itself.

Judges 1:13 · 1 Chronicles 4:13 · 1 Chronicles 2:55

basis: No Verifier lexeme link. The identification rests on the Targum on 1 Chronicles 4:13, repeated by Geneva and reported by Cambridge and JFB; Gill judges it “not probable” on the ground that 1 Chronicles 4:13 names Othniel separately, and Pulpit assigns the related scribal tradition a motive rather than a source.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

Another Benoni: the son of sorrow renamed novel

✦ Gill’s comment on the naming is four words long and opens the whole line: “he was another Benoni.” Ellicott independently points to Genesis 35:18 as the closest parallel, the verse where a dying mother names her son Ben-oni, son of my sorrow, and his father immediately renames him Benjamin, son of the right hand. K&D’s conclusion about Jabez is the same reversal in different words: God so answered him “that his life became a contradiction of his name.” ⚙ The pattern the canon sets up here is a name of sorrow given by a mother and overturned by a father, and it is fulfilled in the one whom Isaiah calls a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who told his disciples in Gethsemane that his soul was sorrowful to the point of death, and who was then set at the right hand. We are honest that Isaiah 53:3 uses a different Hebrew root from this unit’s ʻâtsab, so no verbal link is claimed; and none of the commentators in the brief makes the Jabez to Christ step. The Ben-oni to Benjamin comparison is sourced. The extension to Christ is ours.

Genesis 35:18 · Isaiah 53:3 · Matthew 26:38

Blessed indeed: the sure mercies of David ancient/widely-held

✦ Gill refuses to let “bless me indeed” stay at the level of land and goods: what Jabez sought were “greater blessings than any outward or temporal ones are, even spiritual blessings, covenant blessings, the sure mercies of David, which are solid, substantial, durable, and irreversible.” Henry and Benson say the same in plainer words, that spiritual blessings are the best blessings and that “God’s blessings are real things, and produce real effects.” ⚙ Gill’s phrase is a deliberate citation of Isaiah 55:3, and that promise is quoted by Paul at Antioch in Acts 13:34 and applied there to the resurrection of Christ: the everlasting covenant made sure in a risen heir. This is not our invention; it is the apostolic reading of the phrase Gill chose, and the Reformed tradition Gill writes from takes the blessing of any Old Testament believer to be held in that same covenant. ⚙ What we add is only the shape of the fragment: a man with no stated merit and no recorded promise of his own asks to be blessed indeed, and the last verb in the story belongs to God.

Isaiah 55:3 · Acts 13:34 · Ephesians 1:3

The prayer that is always heard novel

✦ The fragment’s final clause is bare: God brought what he asked. JFB draws out exactly what is proved, that God “was not only the hearer, but the answerer of prayer,” and Pulpit, with Keil, finds the grace of the passage in its closing on “the abounding readiness to answer, on the part of Divine beneficence.” ⚙ The Chronicler never tells us why this prayer was granted, and the silence is the interesting part, because the man’s own side of the vow is missing from the record. Reading the canon as one book, the ground of an answered prayer is never finally the petitioner’s wording. It is the Son who could say at a grave that he knew the Father always heard him, and who was heard in Gethsemane because of his reverent submission while asking that a cup pass. The unstated “then I will” of Jabez is supplied, at the end of the canon, by someone else’s obedience. We mark this as our own reading; no commentator in the brief makes it.

John 11:42 · Hebrews 5:7

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

⚙ Text. The interlinear indices used for the notes above follow the BSB’s English ordering, not Hebrew word order; the literal renderings are rebuilt from the Hebrew sequence, so a note key and the position of its word in our literal line will not always match. Two clauses in v. 10 are genuinely uncertain in the received text, and we have not resolved either. On וְעָשִׂיתָ מֵּרָעָה, Cambridge holds that “Most probably the Heb. text is defective here, one or two words having fallen out,” and proposes supplying “make room for me, and wouldest redeem me”; Poole keeps the consonants as they stand and reads the mem as “work with.” BSB supplies “keep me,” which is neither of these and is the ordinary sense; we have flagged the supply rather than argued it. Cambridge also corrects “coast” to “border” at גְּבוּלִי, and “that it may not grieve me” to “that it be not to my sorrow.”

⚙ Etymology. The meaning of the name יַעְבֵּץ is not securely known. Pulpit states that no root matching these consonants in this order exists and suggests a transposition from יַעְצֵב; Cambridge glosses it “He bringeth sorrow” without argument. The narrative does not depend on the etymology, since the mother supplies the sense herself, but readers should know that the standard gloss is an inference.

⚙ Sources and gaps. Nothing is known of Jabez outside these two verses; K&D say so directly. The reconstruction of the occasion as a Canaanite war is conjecture by Poole, Benson and JFB, offered by JFB as “in all probability,” and we have not treated it as fact. The Targumic glosses reported by Gill (children, disciples, the evil figment) are Targum and not text, and are marked as such wherever quoted. The identification of Jabez with Othniel is carried as a flagged thread. Barnes’s proposed lost written source and Pulpit’s proposed incomplete state of Chronicles are competing conjectures about the same seam; both are recorded, neither is adopted.

⚙ Our layer. Everything marked ⚙ above is machine synthesis and fallible. The two christ entries marked novel are our own readings and are not attested by any commentator in this brief; the entry marked ancient/widely-held rests on Paul’s own citation of Isaiah 55:3 at Acts 13:34 and on Gill’s deliberate use of that phrase here, not on a claim that any of these writers connected Jabez to it. No commentator in the brief is a witness to anything but the words quoted from him.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)