Such a great, sad, awful, soul-crushing weight of pain. More, it's a daily struggle not to cause more pain. In the lives of their loved ones and families. Most profoundly affected them.Ī prayer that I might not cause any more pain. And that was the line that most affected them. That might be a bad translation, but most of the guys in the study carry the NKJV so that was the line that most of them read in the prayer of Jabez. That seems to be the consensus view, that the one named pain requests to be protected from pain.īut for some reason, the New King James Version goes against the flow and gives a different meaning:
Keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain That you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain That you would keep me from hurt and harm Most translations have the prayer being a request for protection from pain and harm: There appears to be some interpretive ambiguity on this point. A prayer that he might be protected from pain or that he might not be the cause of any more pain. Given the life histories of the men in the study, they could identify with a child named pain.Īnd the child named pain grows up to pray a prayer about pain. Rather, they were drawn to the fact that Jabez means pain (or sounds like pain in Hebrew).Īpparently named so because of the pain he caused his mother in childbirth: "His mother called his name Jabez, saying, 'Because I bore him in pain.'" The men didn't focus at all on the "expand my territory" line. You pray the "prayer of Jabez" so that God might bring you success and good things in life-the expansion of your "territory."īut that's not how the men in the prison study heard the prayer of Jabez. Specifically, some felt that Wilkinson took the phrase in the prayer "Bless me, and enlarge my territory" in a prosperity gospel direction. But it also drew a fair amount of criticism.
The Prayer of Jabez took the evangelical world by storm in 2000 when it was first published. “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!”Ī lot of you, when you hear "the prayer of Jabez," think about the best-selling Christian book The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life by Bruce Wilkinson. Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”Īnd Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, In the prison bible study we were working through 1 Chronicles and we came to the prayer of Jabez: