What Does 1 Chronicles 4:9 Mean?
And Jabez was weightier than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, the one of pain, saying, Because I bore him with pain.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.THE KEY
Jabez carries a name tied to sorrow, yet the verse calls him weightier than his brothers: pain marks his beginning, not his measure.
THE MEANING
A painful beginning can be real without becoming the whole measure of a life. This verse holds sorrow beside a life marked by weight and honor.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A painful beginning permanently determines a person’s worth and identity.
THE ROOT
נִכְבָּד
nikhbad
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to carry importance and honor.
“weightier” in this verse is nikhbad. The Hebrew word for “honourable” carries the sense of weight and substance. That makes the verse’s contrast vivid: a name linked to sorrow does not tell the whole measure of Jabez.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: Heavy, weighty
כָּבֵד
This is the concrete weight beneath the honor attributed to Jabez.
kāvōd: Weight, honor, glory
כָּבוֹד
It shows the same root reaching from physical weight to the importance or honor a person carries.
עֹצֶב
ʿōṣeb
GROWS FROM
עצב
ʿ-ṣ-b
Pain or grief; to feel or cause sorrow.
The verse links Jabez’s name to sorrow through wordplay, though the name and the sorrow word are not identical root-forms. The link lets the pain of his beginning remain visible while the description of his life exceeds it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāṣab: To grieve or cause grief
עָצַב
The sorrow here is more than a label: this branch names grief as something felt or caused.
ʿiṣṣāvōn: Painful toil, sorrow
עִצָּבוֹן
This branch shows the root’s reach into pain that accompanies a person’s experience.
THE PATTERN
Sorrow can mark a life’s beginning without becoming the full measure of that life.
And it came to pass, as her living soul was going out, for she died, that she called his name Benoni, son of my bowing low. And his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand.For the burning of his anger lasts a moment, and in his favor is life. Weeping may lodge in the evening, but a ringing cry of joy comes in the morning.We are pressed on every side, yet not cramped into a narrow place; we are without a way through, yet not without a way out.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, as her living soul was going out, for she died, that she called his name Benoni, son of my bowing low. And his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand.Both verses place a sorrow-shaped name beside a life that cannot be contained by that first naming. The parallel makes Jabez’s honor stand out: the pain attached to his name is present, but it is not the whole description of him.
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