Before there was a tribe there was a name, and before there was a name there were two names fighting over one child.And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin. (Genesis 35:18)Hebrew: Ben-Oni (???????????). Ben is son. Onican be read two ways, and the rabbis have argued about it for two thousand years. It is onwith the sense of sorrow, trouble, mourning: son of my sorrow. But on is also vigour, manly strength, the word Jacob uses of Reuben, the beginning of my strength (reshit oni, Genesis 49:3). So the dying mother may have named him son of my sorrow, or son of my strength, or both at once, because in her mouth the two were the same thing. Then Binyamin (???????????): ben plus yamin, the right hand. Son of the right hand. And since yamin is also the south when you face the east, and since a very old reading takes it as yamim, days, the name has also been heard as son of the south and son of days, that is, son of my old age. I hold all of them, because a name given at a grave carries more than one meaning. Greek (Septuagint): Beniamin (?e??aµ??), the same spelling Paul uses of himself in Romans 11:1 and John uses in Revelation 7:8; the Greek simply carried the Hebrew across, and the translators added the gloss huios odynes mou, "son of my pain", for Ben-oni. Aramaic (Targum Onkelos): Binyamin, and for the first name the Targum keeps the pain, bar devai, son of my grief; the Peshitta writes Benyamin (??????). In every language the child has two names, and in every language the father's name won.Why does this matter to a leader? Because the name a sorrow gives you is not the name your Father gives you. Rachel was not wrong; the birth did cost her life. But Jacob looked at the same child and named what God was going to do with him rather than what it had cost to get him. The whole doctrine of Benjamin is in that choice. The Benjamin company is a company of people born out of sorrow and named for the right hand.
