UPDV Bible Header

UPDV Updated Bible Version

Ask About This

Ben-Oni

People · Updated 2026-05-07

Ben-oni is the name Rachel gave her last son in the moment of her death, immediately overridden by his father.

Rachel's Dying Name

The name occurs only once. As Rachel died bearing her second son, she named him out of her own pain; Jacob refused the inheritance of grief and gave the boy a different name: "And it came to pass, as her soul was departing (for she died), that she named him Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin" (Ge 35:18). The doubled naming preserves both the mother's last word and the father's reversal of it. The child is known thereafter as Benjamin.