Benoni is a name found in the King James Bible, appearing 1 time in the text.
Who This Was
Benoni was the name Rachel gave to the son born to her as she was dying. The account appears in Genesis 35, in the midst of Jacob’s family journey. Rachel had traveled with Jacob, and when she went into hard labor, the child was born, but she did not survive. As her soul was departing, she named the infant Benoni, and then she died. She was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem, and Jacob set a pillar upon her grave.
The child himself did nothing in the narrative; he was a newborn at his mother’s death. What Scripture records of him is his naming. His mother, in her final breath, gave him a name that expressed her pain, but his father intervened and called him Benjamin. That is the last we hear of the name Benoni specifically; the child lives on in Scripture under the name his father gave him.
The setting is one of both grief and continuation: a mother dies, a son is born, and a father renames the child. Jacob’s act of renaming is the only recorded response of his in that moment. The text does not tell us why Jacob chose a different name, only that he did. Benoni thus appears in Scripture at the intersection of death and birth, remembered chiefly for a name that was given and then set aside.
The Name
The name Benoni is Hebrew, and its meaning is well established in the text itself. The source note states that it means “son of my sorrow,” and the context of Genesis 35:18 confirms this: Rachel named him as her soul was departing, in the anguish of a fatal childbirth. The name is a compound expressing the grief of his mother in her last moment. It is one of the few names in Scripture whose meaning is explicitly tied to the circumstances of its giving, so there is no uncertainty here. The name Benjamin, by contrast, is the name Jacob gave and is the name by which the child is known throughout the rest of the Bible.
A Closing Thought
Benoni’s story is brief and sorrowful, but it holds a quiet lesson. A name born of grief was not the name he carried through life. His father gave him another, and under that name he became a father of a tribe in Israel. Grief is real and must be spoken, as Rachel spoke it, but it does not have the final word over a life. The Lord who receives the dying mother also watches over the newborn son. Even a name given in sorrow can be overtaken by a name given in hope.
At a Glance
- Gender: Male
- Testament: Old
- Mentions in the KJV: 1
Where It Appears in Scripture
- Genesis 35:18 — And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin.