Bible Commentaries

1 Chronicles 4:9-10

In what Jabez was "more honourable than his brethren" we are not told. It might be in courage; it might be in learning; it is certain that he was honourable for his piety.

I. Jabez called on the God of Israel. It was the habit of his life; it was the action of each separate day; he was known by this; this lay at the foundation of his courage, his goodness, his success.

II. The prayer of Jabez is (1) earnest; (2) full of desire for God; (3) it is a thorough prayer: he asks no partial blessing.

III. "Enlarge my coast." He prays for more territory to his people and himself—more power, more wealth. These are what we should call earthly and temporal blessings. The best men of the Old Testament did not distinguish between temporal and spiritual, as we do. The thing we have to fear is, not "enlargement" in itself, but possible harm and danger to us in the process—perversion, corruption, the coming in of hurtful elements.

IV. Notice the summing up of the prayer: "and that Thine hand might be with me," etc. So let us seek preservation from evil, inward and outward, by watchfulness, by prayer, by dependence on God, and we need never fear enlargement. Let it go on without limit and without fear if it goes on thus, banked in on either hand by Divine blessing and by Divine care.

A. Raleigh, The Way to the City, p. 190.

References: 1 Chronicles 1:12.—H. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 141. 1—Parker, vol. viii., p. 318. 2—Ibid., p. 323. 3—Ibid., p. 327. 1 Chronicles 4:9, 1 Chronicles 4:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii., No. 994; H. Melvill, Sermons on Less Prominent Facts, vol. i., p. 297; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 255, and vol. ii., p. 524. 1 Chronicles 4:17.—J. M. Neale, Occasional Sermons, p. 116. 1 Chronicles 4:22.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 33.

1 Chronicles 4:23

I. Notice how work links men to kings. Here we have potters, gardeners, and hedgers mixed up with the king. The men and women who work, whether with brain or hand, or both, are the people who save the nation from ruin. Is it not so in Christian life and experience? What is a man's religion worth if it does not teach him to labour? Are we not to work out our own salvation, and that for the best of reasons: "It is God that worketh in us"?

II. Kings need different kinds of workers. God needs us. Not that He could not have done without us, but He has elected to win the world by human instrumentality, and—let it be said with reverence—the interests of God are very greatly bound up with the progress of humanity. There is a sense in which God needs us, and cannot carry out His plans without us.

III. "There they dwelt with the king," willing to stay in his service "all the days of their appointed time." Let us be willing to stay. Heaven will keep. Some day we shall go to dwell with the King in another sense. We shall go from the soot of the pottery and the burning heat of the garden to dwell in "quietness and assurance for ever."

T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 193.

References: 1 Chronicles 4:23—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1400; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 155. 4—Parker, vol. viii., p. 331. 1 Chronicles 5:26.—E. H. Plumptre, Expositor, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 230. 5—Parker, vol. viii., p. 335. 1 Chronicles 6:31.—Ibid., Fountain, May 15th, 1878. 6—Ibid., vol. viii., p. 341. 7-8—Ibid., p. 346. 1 Chronicles 9:22.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. x., p. 341. 9—Parker, vol. viii., p. 351. 1 Chronicles 10:9, 1 Chronicles 10:10.—Expositor, 2nd series, vol. vii., p. 309.