Can the Hebrew text help in understanding 1 Chronicles 4:9–10?

 

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2001.

There is a play on words that sound somewhat like each other:

Verse 9a: The man\'s name is Yaʿbēts, because

Verse 9b: His mother bore him beʿōtseb, i.e. in pain.

Then in verse 10, Yaʿbēts prays that God will keep him from evil so that it may not ʿōtsǝbî = hurt, or pain, him. (The Hebrew word for 'keep' here is spelled unusually: it may be a scribal mistake.)

In other words, his mother gave her son a name that contains similarly sounding letters as the word for pain. He prays that his name may not turn out to be prophetic. It's a little bit like a man being called Payne, because his mother suffered pain at the birth.

With warmest greetings,

 
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