What Is the Real Meaning of the Prayer of Jabez?

Had Bruce Wilkinson not published The Prayer of Jabez in 2000, most of us probably would not have heard of it. Oh sure, we would have read the prayer when our Bible reading plan marched us through 1 Chronicles 4:9–10. Yet I wonder if we would have thought much about it.

Historically, Christians have not paid much attention to this prayer. Commentaries from the early and medieval church give it little more than a glance. And yet it has entered into our religious lexicon, and the credit for this goes almost entirely to Wilkinson’s work.

But in so entering, it has made us think more carefully about how strange the story of Jabez is. As Scott Hahn points out, “Jabez appears as if out of nowhere in the Chronicler’s genealogy—in the middle of a list of Judahites but without any reference to his father.”¹ In other words, Jabez has a mysterious air to him, much like Melchizedek in Genesis 14.

But we should not let this mystery, nor its neglect by centuries of commentators, prevent us from patient study of the prayer of Jabez. This passage is truly spiritually rewarding. In this article, I want to demystify the prayer of Jabez by uncovering its original context and commending its edifying use as a prayer for Christians today.

Who was Jabez in the Bible?

According to 1 Chronicles 4:9, “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, ‘I gave birth to him in pain.’” The Hebrew word behind Jabez’s name (עֹצֶב) means “anxious toil, hardship,” and it is only used three times in the Bible (Isa 14:3; 1 Chron 4:9; Ps 139:24).²

A variant of this word appears in Genesis 3:16 and 5:29. In Genesis 3:16, it describes the increase of pain in childbirth, following the sin of Adam and Eve. Given the context of painful birth, the Chronicler plausibly refers to Eve’s increase in pain during birth. Peter Leithart asserts:

Jabez is a child of Eve, a child of curse; the name he inherits from his mother names the curse of his origin. There is nothing but pain in his ancestry, but God makes a new future, answering Jabez’s prayer for blessing, for an enlarged border, for God’s hand to be with him, and for deliverance from the pain of his birth, the pain of primordial curse.³

While Leithart’s theological reading may seem like an overreach, one must remember that Chronicles is a theological interpretation of Israel’s history whose story begins with Adam (1 Chron 1:1). So it is not unreasonable to see Jabez, who is the first person in Chronicles to call upon the name of the Lord, as representing a pathway to overcome sin and its effects.⁴ If so, we can better understand why the Chronicler included Jabez here in the opening genealogies of 1 Chronicles.

Regarding Jabez as a name, it only appears here and in 1 Chronicles 2:55, where it is a name of a town in Judah in which a clan of scribes dwelt. The person (not the town) Jabez is also assumed to be Judahite because his name appears in a Judahite genealogy.

Beyond these scraps of historical information, we also learn that “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers” (1 Chron 4:9). The word translated “honorable” is often translated as “glory” in the Bible, although the term “honorable” contextually renders the sense well enough. Even so, it may be worth translating the phrase as “more glorious than his brothers” because, as we’ll see, Jabez prays for glorious ends in 1 Chronicles 4:10.

Explore the meaning of כבד (“glory”) with Logos’s Bible Word Study. Try it for free!

What was Jabez’s prayer?

Jabez prayed for glory and he received it. The text says,

Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. (1 Chron 4:10)

This request, along with God’s granting of it, explains why Jabez had more glory than his brothers. Glory describes a good work well done, and honor is what is given to one who has gained glory. The Apostle Paul in the New Testament uses the terms in this way, encouraging Christians to pursue glory and honor (Rom 2:7).

In the commentary tradition, this has not always been well understood. For example, Louis Jonker comments, “The writer indicates that Jabez was honored more than his brothers, without giving any reason for this statement.”⁵ But reasons are given. First Chronicles 4:10 explicitly explains how Jabez prayed and received great rewards from God. That is how he is more glorious than his brothers.

When speaking of glory in this way, a brief caution is in order. Attempting to gain the glory that belongs to God alone is inappropriate for anyone, since God has unique glory, being the Creator and King of all things. Jabez, however, does not seek God’s unique glory but rather a glory given by God, as I will show.

What glory did Jabez receive?

What exactly is the glory that Jabez attained?

First, “Jabez is the first one in Chronicles to ‘call on [qrʾ] the God of Israel’ by name.”⁶ So part of his glory is that he calls on the name of God early on. This reminds us of how the Sethites called upon the name of the Lord after Adam and Eve fell into sin: “At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord” (Gen 4:26). In the context of Chronicles, Jabez shows his glory by being the first to call on the name of the God of Israel.

Second, as Jabez’s birth in pain recalls the effect of sin in the garden (Gen 3:16–17), so God’s protection of Jabez results in him being “free from pain.” In other words, something about Jabez’s glory involves a reversal of the effects of sin. Leithart notes, “Jabez provides a small glimpse of the fulfillment of Yahweh’s commitment to bring Israel from the ‘pain’ of its exilic new birth into an enlarged space, blessed and guided by the hand of God.”⁷

Third, Jabez receives blessing from God in the form of enlarged borders, which prior Scripture has associated with God’s covenantal blessing. For example, God promises in Exodus 34:24: “For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your border” (see also Deut 19:8). The language of enlarging one’s borders, therefore, is not merely well-wishing for riches and land. It accesses the structure of God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. Once again, we see Jabez not pursuing glory for his own private ends but rather accessing God’s good promises.

Fourth, Jabez gains glory because the hand of the Lord is with him. Hahn explains, “The reference to God’s hand recalls the exodus wrought by the strong hand of the Lord (Exod. 13:14, 16). And later in Chronicles, this expression will figure in several key prayers, including David’s great penitential and intercessory prayer, where he asks that God’s hand be against himself rather than the people (1 Chr. 21:17; 29:12, 16).”⁸ When God’s hand is with someone, it means he will bring them success. Indeed, in the context of Chronicles, “Jabez ben Judah stands for the hope that the seed of David, despite being guilty of ma’al, can call on the Lord and be delivered into a large place of blessing.”⁹

Fifth, when Jabez prays, “keep me from harm,” he uses a word that can also mean “evil.” It certainly means harm, since in the Hebrew Bible, the word “evil” could mean calamity, harm, and natural disaster. Yet it is worth understanding this semantic range because, as I will suggest below, Jabez’s prayer has much in common with the Lord’s prayer; and there, Jesus taught his disciples to pray that God would deliver them from evil (Matt 6:13). In any case, Jabez’s glory here is that he prayed to avoid evil.

Putting these five elements together, we can think of Jabez’s prayer as a public prayer for the common good of Israel. The prayer is thus political. “Prayer,” explains Leithart, “will be one of the keys to the Chronicler’s political theology.”¹⁰ These gifts of God that Jabez receives, in line with the promises of God, explain why the Chronicler calls Jabez more glorious than his brothers.

Should we pray the prayer of Jabez? If so, how?

Yes, not only can we pray as Jabez did. We must. Every Christian must seek glory, honor, and immortality by our good works (Rom 2:7). By faith, God hears our prayers. And God crowns his gifts. Glory is therefore the effect of a good work done well. And here, Jabez prays for glorious works that accord with God’s promises. What else is a good work but doing what God wills? In this sense, the pursuit of glory is not vainglory (a vice) but rather what Christians pray when they say, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).

Notice that Jabez does not pray for just anything. He did not ask for the throne of Jerusalem or for personal aggrandizement (cf. Jas 4:2–3). Instead, he prayed for enlarged borders because that accorded with God’s prior covenantal promises. He asked God to give what he promised. And God answered that prayer.

Likewise, when we pray according to God’s will, he answers (1 John 5:14–15). But if we ask God for sinful things or with evil desires, God will not hear or answer. Hence, we ought not to pray for God to enlarge our borders today as if that means that God will make us rich, wealthy, and whole in every way (cf. Luke 22:42). Jabez sought God’s blessing in accordance with his promises. That is how we should pray today as well.

It is an irony then that the prayer of Jabez has become so associated with prosperity theology. Far from enriching himself, Jabez prayed for God to bless him as part of Israel, in line with God’s promises. This would be equivalent to us today praying for God’s kingdom to come. In both cases, it is good and right to pray for these things. As David, another Judahite, reminds us in 1 Chronicles 29:11, we should pray,

Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.

Jabez prayed for the enlargement of the border of God’s kingdom on earth to symbolize God’s kingdom coming across the whole earth. So too may we today pray for the enlargement of God’s kingdom.

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1. Scott Hahn, The Kingdom of God as Liturgical Empire: A Theological Commentary on 1–2 Chronicles (Baker Academic, 2012), 40.
2. Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill, 1994), 1:865.
3. Peter J. Leithart, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Brazos, 2019), 19.
4. Hahn, Kingdom, 40.
5. Louis Jonker, 1 and 2 Chronicles: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox Press, 2026), 184.
6. Hahn, Kingdom, 40.
7. Leithart, Chronicles, 20.
8. Hahn, Kingdom, 41.
9. Leithart, Chronicles, 20.
10. Leithart, Chronicles, 20.