“His mother named him Jabez”
His mother had named him Jabez, saying, 'Because I bore him in pain.'… May Your hand be with me and keep me from harm, so that I will be free from pain. (1 Chronicles 4:9–10 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A short biography randomly dropped into a long genealogy.
The cultural key
In a chapter of bare genealogy, this man halts the list because of his name. 'Jabez' (Yabetz) is a near-anagram of the Hebrew word for pain or sorrow (etzev), so his mother, remembering a hard labor, effectively names her son 'Ouch.' In a culture that believed a name could shape a destiny, that is a heavy thing to carry through life. His prayer is built entirely around escaping it: he asks God to bless him, enlarge his border, and 'keep me from harm, so that I will be free from pain', the same root that spells his name. The point a modern reader walks past is that Jabez is praying against his own name, asking God to overrule the sorrow written into it, and God grants it.
Recovered meaning
Jabez's name is a Hebrew pun on 'pain,' and his prayer is a plea to be freed from the very thing he was named for. The famous request lands only once you hear the wordplay: a man asking God to cancel the sorrow stamped on him at birth.