Hebrew name meaning 'he causes pain' or 'born in sorrow.' Biblical figure in 1 Chronicles known for his prayer to God.
Jabez is a name of considerable antiquity and striking etymology. In the Hebrew Bible, Jabez appears in a brief but memorable passage in 1 Chronicles 4:9–10 — a man "more honorable than his brothers" whose mother named him Jabez because she "bore him in pain" (the name derives from the Hebrew root yabetz, related to pain or sorrow). What makes the passage remarkable is what follows: Jabez prays directly to God for blessing, expanded territory, and protection from harm, and his prayer is granted.
This concise narrative — suffering transformed by faith into flourishing — gave the name a theology in miniature. Jabez was used with some regularity in Puritan New England, where biblical names from obscure corners of the Old Testament were valued precisely for their rarity and their scriptural seriousness. The name appears in colonial Massachusetts records, carried by farmers, ministers, and craftsmen who wore their unusual names as markers of devotion.
It faded across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as biblical naming fashions shifted toward the New Testament and more familiar Old Testament figures. A 2000 devotional bestseller, The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson, briefly revived cultural awareness of the name and its story, introducing millions of readers to this minor biblical character's major spiritual aspiration. The name's sound — two syllables, the second with a buzzing fricative — is unusual enough to be genuinely distinctive in any era. Jabez is a name for a child whose story, like its biblical bearer's, begins in one register and resolves in another.