1 Chronicles 4:9-10 And Jabez was more honorable than his brothers: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bore him with sorrow.… We know nothing whatsoever of the Jabez here commemorated beyond what we find in these two verses. But this is enough to mark him out as worthy, in no ordinary degree, of being admired and imitated. There is a depth and a comprehensiveness in the registered prayer of this unknown individual — unknown except from that prayer — which should suffice to make him a teacher of the righteous in every generation. Let us now take the several parts of the text in succession, commenting upon each and searching out the lessons which may be useful to ourselves. The first verse contains a short account of Jabez; the second is occupied by his prayer. Now there is no denying that we are short-sighted beings, so little able to look into the future that we constantly miscalculate as to what would be for our good, anticipating evil from what is working for benefit, and reckoning upon benefit from that which may prove fraught with nothing but evil. How frequently does that which we have baptized with our tears make the countenance sunny with smiles! how frequently, again, does that which we have welcomed with smiles wring from us tears! We do not know the particular reasons which influenced the mother of Jabez to call him by that name, a name which means "sorrowful." We are merely told, "His mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow." Whether it were that she brought forth this son with more than common anguish, or whether, as it may have been, the time of his birth were the time of her widowhood, the mother evidently felt but little of a mother's joy, and looked on her infant with forebodings and fears. Perhaps it could hardly have been her own bodily suffering which made her fasten on the boy a dark and gloomy appellation, for, the danger past, she would rather have given a name commemorative of deliverance, remembering "no more her anguish for joy that a man was born into the world." Indeed, when Rachel bare Benjamin she called his name Benoni, that is, "the son of my sorrow"; but then it was "as her soul was in departing, for she died." We may well, therefore, suppose that the mother of Jabez had deeper and more lasting sorrows to register in the name of her boy than those of the giving him birth. And whatsoever may have been the cause, whether domestic affliction or public calamity, we may consider the woman as having bent in bitterness over her new-born child, having only tears to give him as his welcome to the world, and feeling it impossible to associate with him even a hope of happiness. She had probably looked with different sentiments on her other children. She had clasped them to her breast with all a mother's gladness. But with Jabez it was all gloom; the mother felt as if she could never be happy again: this boy brought nothing but an accession of care. And yet the history of the family is gathered into the brief sentence, "Jabez was more honourable than his brethren." Nothing is told us of his brethren, except that they were less honourable than himself; they, too, may have been excellent, and perhaps as much is implied, but Jabez took the lead, and whether or not the youngest in years, surpassed every other in piety and renown. Oh, if the mother lived to see the manhood of her sons, how strangely must the name Jabez, a name probably given in a moment of despondency and faithlessness, have fallen on her earl She may then have regretted the gloomy and ominous name, feeling as though it reproached her for having yielded to her grief, and allowed herself to give way to dreary forebodings. It may have seemed to her as a standing memorial of her want of confidence in God, and of the falseness of human calculations. And is not this brief notice of the mother of Jabez full of warning and admonition to ourselves? How ready are we to give the name Jabez to persons or things which, could we but look into God's purpose, or repose on His promise, we might regard as designed to minister permanently to our security and happiness. "All these things," said the patriarch Jacob, "are against me," as one trial after another fell to his lot. And yet, as you all know, it was by and through these gloomy dealings that a merciful God was providing for the sustenance of the patriarch and his household, for their support and aggrandisement in a season of extraordinary pressure. Thus it continually happens in regard of ourselves. We give the sorrowful title to that which is designed for the beneficent end. Judging only by present appearances, allowing our fears and feelings rather than our faith to take the estimate or fix the character of occurrences, we look with gloom on our friends and with melancholy on our sources of good. Sickness, we call it Jabez, though it may be sent to minister to our spiritual health; poverty, we call it Jabez, though coming to help us to the possession of heavenly riches; bereavement, we call it Jabez, though designed to graft us more closely into the household of God. Oh for a better judgment! or rather, oh for a simpler faith! We cannot, indeed, see the end from the beginning, and therefore cannot be sure that what rises in cloud will set in vermilion and gold; but we need not take upon ourselves to give the dark name, as though we could not be deceived in regard of the nature. Let us derive this lesson from the concise but striking narrative in the first verse of our text. Let us neither look confidently on what promises best, nor despairingly on what wears the most threatening appearance. God often wraps up the withered leaf of disappointment in the bright purple bud, and as often unfolds the golden flower of enjoyment in the nipped and blighted shoot. Experience is full of evidence that there is no depending on appearances. If, in a spirit of repining or unbelief, you brand as Jabez what may be but a blessing in disguise, no marvel if sometimes, in just anger and judgment, He allow the title to prove correct, and suffer not this Jabez, this child born in sorrow, to become to you as otherwise it might, more honourable, more profitable than any of its brethren. But let us now turn to the prayer of Jabez. We ought not to examine the prayer without pausing to observe to whom it is addressed. It is not stated that Jabez called on God, but on "the God of Israel." There are few things more significant than the difference in the manner in which God is addressed by saints under the old and under the new dispensation. Patriarchs pray to God as the God of their fathers; apostles pray to Him as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In both forms of address there is an intimation of the same fact, that we need something to encourage us in approaching unto God; that exposed as we are to His just wrath for our sins, we can have no confidence in speaking to Him as to absolute Deity. There must be something to lean upon, some plea to urge, otherwise we can but shrink from the presence of One so awful in His gloriousness. We must, then, have some title with which to address God — some title which, interfering not with His majesty or His mysteriousness, may yet place Him under a character which shall give hope to the sinful as they prostrate themselves before Him. We need not say that under the gospel dispensation this title should be that which is used by St. Paul, "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Having such a Mediator through whom to approach, there is no poor supplicant who may not come with boldness to the mercy-seat. But under earlier dispensations, when the mediatorial office was but imperfectly made known, men had to seize on other pleas and encouragements; and then it was a great thing that they could address God as you continually find Him addressed, as the God of Israel, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The title assured them that God was ready to hear prayer and to answer it. They went before God, thronged, as it were, with remembrances of mercies bestowed, deliverances vouchsafed, evils averted: how could they fear that God was too great to be addressed, too occupied to reply, or too stern to show kindness, when they bore in mind how He had shielded their parents, hearkened to their cry, and proved Himself unto them "a very present help" in all time of trouble? Ah, and though, under the new dispensation, "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" be the great character under which God should be addressed by us in prayer, there is no need for our altogether dropping the title, the God of our fathers. It might often do much to cheer a sorrowful heart, and to encourage a timid, to address God as the God of our fathers — the God in whom my parents trusted. And what did Jabez pray for? for great things — great, if you suppose him to have spoken only as an heir of the temporal Canaan, greater if you ascribe to him acquaintance with the mercies of redemption. "Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed." Lay the emphasis on that word "indeed." Many things pass for blessings which are not; to as many more we deny, though we ought to give the character. There is a blessing in appearance which is not also a blessing in reality; and conversely, the reality may exist where the appearance is wanting. The man in prosperity appears to have, the man in adversity to be without a blessing — yet how often does God bless by withholding! And Jabez goes on, "That Thou wouldest enlarge my coast." He probably speaks as one who had to win from the enemy his portion of the promised land. He knew that, as the Lord said to Joshua, "there remained yet very much land to be possessed"; it was not, then, necessarily as a man desirous of securing to himself a broader inheritance, it may have been as one who felt jealous that the idolater should still defile what God had set apart for His people, that he entreated the enlargement of his coast. And a Christian may use the same prayer; he, too, has to ask that his coast may be enlarged. Who amongst us has yet taken possession of one-half the territory assigned him by God? Our privileges as Christians, as members of an apostolical Church, as heirs of the kingdom of heaven, how are these practically under-valued, how little are they realised, how sluggishly appropriated! What districts of unpossessed territory are there in the Bible! how much of that blessed book has been comparatively unexamined by us! We have our favourite parts, and give only an occasional and cursory notice to the rest. How little practical use do we make of God's promises! What need, then, for the prayer, "Oh that Thou wouldest enlarge my coast"! I would not be circumscribed in spiritual things. I would not live always within these narrow bounds. There are bright and glorious tracts beyond. It is a righteous covetousness, this for an enlargement of coast; for he has done little, we might almost say nothing, in religion, who can be content with what he has done. It is a holy ambition, this which pants for an ampler territory. But are we only to pray? are we not also to struggle, for the enlargement of our coasts? Indeed we are: observe how Jabez proceeds, "And that Thine hand might be with me." He represents himself as arming for the enlargement of his coast, but as knowing all the while that "the battle is the Lord's." There is one more petition in the prayer of him who, named with a dark and inauspicious name, yet grew to be "more honourable than his brethren": "That Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me." "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" Jabez prayed not for the being kept from evil, but kept from the being grieved by evil. And there is a vast difference between the being visited by evil and grieved by evil. He is grieved by evil who does not receive it meekly and submissively, as the chastisement of his heavenly Father. He is grieved by evil whom evil injures, in place of benefits — which latter is always God's purpose in His permission or appointment. He is grieved by evil whom it drives into sin, and to whom, therefore, it furnishes cause of bitter repentance. You see, then, that Jabez showed great spiritual discernment in casting his prayer into this particular form. We, too, should pray, not absolutely that God would keep us from evil, but that He would so keep it from us, or us from it, that it may not grieve us. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow. |
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