Benjamin

(son of the right hand, i.e. of strength, of good fortune) — the name of the following persons: a) (Gen. 35:18, and elsewhere) youngest son of Jacob by Rachel. His mother died immediately after his birth, which took place near Bethlehem, on Jacob’s journey from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. In her dying labor pains she called him Ben-oni, which means “son of my sorrow,” but his father gave him another name — Benjamin, that is, “son of my right hand.” Benjamin gave much joy to his aged father, and every reader of the Bible is undoubtedly familiar with the special attachment and love shown to him by Joseph, when his brothers brought Benjamin with them to Egypt.

Jacob, on his deathbed, foretold the fate of Benjamin and his tribe thus: “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil” (Gen. 49:27) — a prophecy fully vindicated in the later warlike inclinations of this tribe; b) (1 Chron. 7:10) son of Bilhan, a Benjamite; c) (Ezra 10:32) son or descendant of Harim, in the days of Ezra, married to a foreign woman; d) (Neh. 3:23) one of those who repaired the wall of Jerusalem; e) (Neh. 12:34) of the leaders in Judea, at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem.