1 Chronicles 4
First Chronicles3 opens with chapter after chapter of names. Fathers and sons, clans and towns, stretching back to Adam. It can feel like the least promising place in the Bible to find anything alive. But the chronicler is doing something. He writes for a people just home from exile, and these names hold the line of promise together from Judah toward David. Chapter 4 walks the families of Judah.
Then the march of names stops on one man. His name is Jabez, and it means pain; his mother gave it to him because I bare him with sorrow. We learn nothing else. He appears, he prays, and he is gone. But the chronicler pauses to call him more honourable than his brethren, and to record his prayer and God's five-word answer: God granted him that which he requested. One prayer, set like a pearl in a register. And a God who heard it.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
1 Chronicles 4:1-8The Clans of Judah
1The sons of Judah; Pharez, Hezron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal. 2And Reaiah the son of Shobal begat Jahath; and Jahath begat Ahumai and Lahad. These are the families of the Zorathites. 3And these were of the father of Etam; Jezreel, and Ishma, and Idbash: and the name of their sister was Hazelelponi: 4And Penuel the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah. These are the sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah, the father of Bethlehem.
5And Ashur the father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah. 6And Naarah bare him Ahuzam, and Hepher, and Temeni, and Haahashtari. These were the sons of Naarah. 7And the sons of Helah were, Zereth, and Jezoar, and Ethnan. 8And Coz begat Anub, and Zobebah, and the families of Aharhel the son of Harum.
The chapter opens the way a deed of inheritance opens - with names. The sons of Judah; Pharez, Hezron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal. At the head stands Pharez, and behind him Hezron, the line that the chronicler's readers knew ran down to David and to the kings of Judah. But what follows is not a king-list. It is something humbler and broader: the Zorathites, the families of Etam, the two wives of Ashur the father of Tekoa, the obscure households of Coz and Harum. These are not famous people. Most appear here and nowhere else in all of Scripture. The chronicler is gathering up a whole people - not just the great names, but the clans and settlements and ordinary families that made the tribe of Judah an actual living community. To a nation rebuilding after exile, every name was a thread back to who they were, proof that the line had not been lost.1
One small phrase in verse 4 leaps out to anyone who knows where the story is going: Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah, the father of Bethlehem. Ephratah and Bethlehem - the very names. This is the town where Ruth would glean in the fields of Boaz, where David would be born and anointed, and where the prophet said the ruler of Israel would come from: But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel (Micah 5:2). The genealogy is not only a record of the past; it is a thread stretched toward the future. Even in this dry ledger of clans, the town of the coming King is quietly named, generations before He is born there.
1 Chronicles 4:9-10The Prayer of Jabez
9And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow. 10And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.
By every measure the genealogy itself uses, Jabez is not distinguished at all. No famous father, no notable sons, no office, no conquest, no land that bears his name. He appears, prays, and vanishes. Yet the chronicler stops the whole register to weigh him above the rest: more honourable than his brethren. The word means weighty, esteemed, of real account - and that is the puzzle. What earns it? Not lineage. Not power. Not achievement. The next verse answers: he called on the God of Israel. In a chapter that measures people by who their fathers were and what towns they built, here is a different scale of worth entirely. A man is counted weighty in heaven because he turned to God and asked.
Notice the posture of the prayer. Jabez does not consult a custom or recite a charm; he addresses a Person - the covenant God of his people, the LORD who had bound Himself to Israel by promise. And the way he asks is worth lingering over. It is bold without being proud, and dependent without being despairing. He asks for real, concrete things - blessing, room, God's presence, protection - as a man who genuinely believes the God of Israel both can and might give them. Every clause leans on God to act, so this is no magic formula for getting whatever you want. But it is no timid, half-hearted asking either. Jabez wants God's blessing and he says so plainly. The man whose name means pain does not let his beginning silence him. He opens his mouth and asks.
The prayer has four clear petitions, and together they map nearly the whole of a life laid before God. First, that thou wouldest bless me indeed - the fullness of God's favor, asked for without apology. Second, enlarge my coast - literally widen my border, give me room: in an Israel where land was livelihood and inheritance, this is a plea for provision and a place to live and work. Third, that thine hand might be with me - the deepest request of the four, for it asks not for things but for God Himself, His active presence accompanying every step. And fourth, that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me - protection from the harm and hurt that his very name had warned him of. Blessing, room, God's presence, and protection from evil: it is a remarkably whole prayer, holding together the outward and the inward, the practical and the spiritual, the gift and the Giver.
Five words close the story, with no fanfare and no qualification: God granted him that which he requested. The man born of sorrow asked, and God gave. Watch how the verse refuses to become a formula. It does not say Jabez prayed a special prayer and unlocked guaranteed prosperity; it says this man, calling honestly on the God of Israel, was heard. What the chronicler preserves is not a technique but a testimony. The point is never the four petitions as a script to repeat. It is the God behind the answer - near enough to be called upon by a nobody in a genealogy, and willing enough to grant what was asked. The prayer of the lowly is not lost in the air. It reaches Him, and He answers.3
1 Chronicles 4:11-43The Craftsmen of Judah and the Pasture of Simeon
13And the sons of Kenaz; Othniel, and Seraiah: and the sons of Othniel; Hathath. 14And Meonothai begat Ophrah: and Seraiah begat Joab, the father of the valley of Charashim; for they were craftsmen. 18And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these are the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took.
After the prayer of Jabez the lists resume, and the chronicler keeps doing the quietly remarkable thing he has done all along: he writes down working people. The line of Kenaz includes Othniel, who would become Israel's first judge and deliverer (Judg. 3:9). But alongside the famous, the register names the obscure with equal care - and even tells us their trades. Seraiah is the father of the valley of Charashim, which the text glosses for us: for they were craftsmen. A whole valley named after its workers, because the skill of the families who lived there had become the identity of the place. The chronicler also pauses on a marriage that quietly crosses every boundary - Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took - an Egyptian princess folded into the families of Judah and remembered by name. The genealogy keeps insisting that the people of God are not an abstraction. They are weavers and metalworkers, settlers and in-laws, named and counted.3
21The sons of Shelah the son of Judah were, Er the father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea, 22And Jokim, and the men of Chozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, who had the dominion in Moab, and Jashubi-lehem. And these are ancient things. 23These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.
The Judah genealogy closes on one of the most quietly beautiful verses in all the lists. After naming the house of them that wrought fine linen - the weavers, the makers of beautiful cloth - the chronicler ends with this: These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work. Potters and gardeners. People who shaped clay and tended growing things, who lived out among the plants and hedges and gave their craft to the king's service. They are not warriors or priests or princes. They are the makers and the growers - and the record dignifies them by setting their humble trades down beside the line of David, and by noting that they dwelt with the king for his work. Even the potter at his wheel had a place in the kingdom and a place in the sacred memory of the people. There is no such thing, in this chapter, as work too ordinary for God to remember.
24The sons of Simeon were, Nemuel, and Jamin, Jarib, Zerah, and Shaul: 27And Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters; but his brethren had not many children, neither did all their family multiply, like to the children of Judah. 40And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old.
The chapter turns from Judah to the tribe of Simeon, and the chronicler is honest about a hard fact: his brethren had not many children, neither did all their family multiply, like to the children of Judah. Simeon was the lesser tribe - fewer in number, with no great share of land of its own, scattered among the inheritance of Judah. Long before, the dying Jacob had spoken a word over Simeon that this verse quietly fulfills: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel (Gen. 49:7). Yet the striking thing is that Simeon does not simply vanish from the record. The chronicler still names their fathers, still lists their cities unto the reign of David, still counts their princes whose house of their fathers increased greatly. The diminished tribe is remembered with the same care as the great one. Being smaller did not mean being forgotten.
The chapter ends with the men of Simeon doing the most ordinary thing a pastoral people could do: going out to find grass for their animals. And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable. It is a gentle close to a long register - the diminished tribe, scattered and small, nonetheless provided for. The pasture was rich, the land was broad, the place was quiet. There is a quiet mercy written into the geography here: God did not forget Simeon. The scattering that Jacob foretold did not become abandonment. Even the lesser tribe found a wide and peaceable place to graze its flocks, because the God who keeps the names of His people also keeps their provision. The chronicler, writing for a people who knew what it was to be reduced and resettled, lets the chapter rest on a picture of grace: good pasture, found by the small.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of 1 Chronicles 4 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the wordplay on Ya'betz (v. 9) and 'otzeb (“sorrow, pain”), and for the way the tradition reads the four petitions of his prayer in verse 10.
- 1 Chronicles 4 ↔ Matthew 6 · John 17 · Isaiah 53Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jabez's plea to be kept from evil (v. 10) to the Lord's own deliver us from evil (Matt. 6:13) and keep them from the evil (John 17:15), and the man named for sorrow to the One called a man of sorrows (Isa. 53:3).
- 1 Chronicles 4 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's footnotes on 1 Chronicles 4 - the structure of the Judah and Simeon genealogies, the play between the name Jabez and the Hebrew for pain, and the historical notes behind the craftsmen, the potters, and the Simeonites' search for pasture.
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Clans of Judah
- Micah 5:2But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.The Bethlehem quietly named in verse 4 - the town of the coming King, generations before His birth.
- Ruth 4:18-22Now these are the generations of Pharez: Pharez begat Hezron... and Jesse begat David.The same line that heads this chapter - Pharez and Hezron - carried all the way to David.
- Luke 10:20Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.The God who kept these forgotten names in His record keeps the names of His own where they cannot be lost.
The Prayer of Jabez
- Matthew 6:13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.Jabez’s plea to be kept from evil (v. 10), set at the very heart of the prayer the Lord taught His own.
- John 17:15I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.Christ Himself praying Jabez’s request over His followers on the last night.
- Matthew 7:7Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you.The welcome behind “God granted him that which he requested” - the asking itself is invited.
- Isaiah 53:3-4A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief... Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.The deeper answer to the man named for sorrow - the One who took the grief into Himself.
The Craftsmen of Judah and the Pasture of Simeon
- Genesis 49:7I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.Jacob’s word over Simeon - quietly fulfilled in the diminished, scattered tribe of verse 27.
- Judges 3:9The LORD raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel... even Othniel the son of Kenaz.The Othniel of verse 13 - Israel’s first judge, named here among the working clans of Judah.
- Colossians 3:23And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.The potters who “dwelt with the king for his work” (v. 23) - ordinary labor offered to the King.
- Psalm 23:1-2The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.The “fat pasture and good” found by Simeon (v. 40) - the Shepherd’s provision for His own.