Nothing more is known of this Jabez or of his brethren. “The Speaker’s Commentary” regards the fact as remarkable that Jabez should be introduced without description or patronymic, as if a well-known personage, and supposes that he was known to those for whom the Book of Chronicles was written, either by tradition or by writings which have perished. The word Jabez signifies sorrowful. Jabez was distinguished in some way above his brethren. By this distinction we are not to infer the exercise of an undue partiality in the spirit of his parents. Account for it as we may, some men appear to be born with what may be called a larger religiousness of nature than other men. It is easy for them to pray; it is a delight to them to peruse all sacred writings; it is a positive pain to them to be deprived of religious privileges. We must leave this mystery as insoluble. It is a very pleasant mystery to those who are gifted with religious intuition; but, on the other hand, it is a most appalling mystery to those who seem to be what we can not better describe than by calling them natural Atheists. The name which Jabez bore was a memorial of his mother’s sorrow--not a prophecy of his own. Yet Jabez was animated by that inexplicable superstition which discovers in names and circumstances omens and predictions which the imagination can never treat with disregard. Jabez might intellectually know that his name did but represent what his mother had endured, yet a subtle feeling took possession of him, as if he himself would in some way be involved in the same sorrow. Nor was this an irrational conclusion. As a matter of fact, some men are born to more sorrow than others--as certainly as by constitution some men are more religious than others. Here, again, is a dark and painful mystery. We see the operation of this mystery even in the same family, where one of the children may be full of sunlight, hope and music, and another may be doomed to walk in darkness throughout a lifetime--unable to discern between Summer and Winter, loaded with trouble and oppressed with undefinable apprehensions. Jabez is known to history as pre-eminently a man of prayer. Although it has been considered that the prayer of Jabez was uttered in view of some imminent battle or other dreaded experience, yet by common consent Jabez has been regarded by Christian students as a typical man of prayer. Judging the case within the narrow limits of the history given in verses nine and ten, it would seem as if Jabez started life in an act of prayer. The image is at once graphic and beautiful. Think of a young man standing at the door of his house, looking abroad at the unknown and unmeasured world, listening to the conflicting voices which troubled his native air, and then turning his eyes to Heaven and asking divine direction before he would take a single step from the threshold of his home. Nothing of the nature of mere romance attaches itself to this picture.