And the sons of his wife Hodiah. — The existing Hebrew text says, And the sons of Hodiah’s wife. Hodiah recurs as a man’s name in Nehemiah 8:7; Nehemiah 9:5; but a very slight change — the addition of three letters — in the Hebrew would give the sense: “And sons of his Jewish wife, the sister of Naham, were the father of Keilah the Garmite, and Eshtemoa,” &c.
Naham is unknown.
Keilah is a town in the Shephelah (Joshua 15:44), well known as the scene of David’s prowess and peril (1 Samuel 23).
Eshtemoa occurred in 1 Chronicles 4:17, in connexion with Ishbah, son of Ezra by Bithiah. (See Note there.) The Garmites and Maachathites are unknown clans. The former founded or were settled at Keilah. It appears that abi (“father of”) has dropped out of the text before Eshtemoa; the sense being that the Maachathites were settled at Eshtemoa; which, of course, they may have been, side by side with the half-Egyptian clan Ishbah. Maachah is mentioned, 1 Chronicles 2:48, as a concubine of Caleb. The list is still dealing with the Calebite division of Hezron.