n southern Israel after the conquest of Canaan and during the time of the judges. He was born into the tribe of Judah and eventually became the notable head of a clan. Yet his story really begins with this name: “His mother called his name Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.”In Hebrew, the word Jabez means “pain”. A literal rendering could read, “He causes (or will cause) pain.” Doesn’t sound like the start to a promising life, does it?All babies arrive with a certain amount of pain, but something about Jabez’s birth went beyond the usual – so much so that his mother chose to memorialize it in her son’s name. Why? The pregnancy or the delivery may have been traumatic. Perhaps the baby was born breach. Or perhaps the child’s father abandoned her during the pregnancy; maybe he had died; maybe the family had fallen into such financial straits that the prospect of another mouth to feed brought only fear and worry. Only God knows for sure what caused the pain of this anguished mother. Not that it made much difference to young Jabez. He grew up with a name any boy would love to hate. Imagine if you had to go through childhood enduring the teasing of bullies, the daily reminders of your unwelcome arrival, and mocking questions like, “So, young man, what was your mother thinking”?Yet by far the heaviest burden of Jabez’s name was how it defined his future. In Bible times, a man and his name were so intimately related that “to cut off the name” of an individual amounted to the same thing as killing him. A name was often taken as a wish for or prophecy about the child’s future. For example, Jacob can mean “grabber”, a good one-word biography for that scheming patriarch. Naomi and her husband named their two sons Mahlon and Chilion. Translation? “Puny” and “pining.” And that was exactl...
