Jabez
by By Lemmons, Thom
Category: Fiction , Religious

Study Guide for ABA In his autobiographical work Telling Secrets Frederick Buechner writes, “My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. …[I]t is precisely through these stories in all their particularity…that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally.” Belief in the power of such particular stories, both individual and collective, underlies Jabez: A Novel. Jabez receives the barest of mentions in the Bible. In 1 Chronicles 4:9-10, amid a numbing geneological passage, falls this tidbit of information: Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “…because I gave birth to him in pain.” 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. (niv) According to some scholars, Jabez likely lived in southern Judah (the southern portion of the Holy Land) sometime during the period 1230-1050 b.c. During this time, Israel had no king but was governed by “judges,” God-appointed persons with wisdom or other attributes enabling them to “judge” or serve as national leaders. The period of the judges was, according to the biblical account, characterized by widespread and recurring idolatry among the Israelites, as they observed and began to copy the polytheistic customs of the people they had supplanted in Canaan. Scripture states that various peoples and kings were sent to “afflict” Israel so they would realize their sin and return to faith in the God who had delivered them from their captivity in Egypt. Imagine, then, during this time of upheaval and national dislocation, that a boy is born under uncertain circumstances into a family that has lost the head of its household. Imagine that his earliest memories are of not belonging. Imagine that the mother who bore him and saddled him with a most unfortunate name (“Jabez” is Hebrew for “Pain”) lives herself under an unrelenting cloud of grief. Imagine that his older brothers ignore him unless they are joining in the taunts of the other boys of the small village. Imagine that this boy, whose life is characterized, within and without, by pain that he cannot understand, begins to catch hints–subtle at first–that another sort of life is sometimes available to certain people. Imagine that he begins to ask himself why even the simplest joys are withheld from him. And then, imagine that he begins to hear stories of a god whose