These who were written by name. — The Ameers enumerated in 1 Chronicles 4:34-37.
Smote their tents. — These Hamites, like the men of Laish, were nomades.
And the habitations that were found there. — Heb. text, the wells: Heb. marg., the Maonites, in Hebrew a very similar word. LXX., τοὺς Mivaíovs, the Maonites or Minacans. The text may be compared with the Syriac, which reads, “And all springs of water that were there they stopped up.” But the Margin is probably correct, as the verb which the Syriac supplies is wanting in the Hebrew. The Maonites appear to have been sojourners from Maon, south of the Dead Sea, near Petra, now called Maân. (Comp. 2 Chronicles 20:1.)
Destroyed them utterly. — Devoted them to God for destruction; Joshua 6:17, “the city shall be accursed unto the Lord.” This practice was not peculiar to Israel, but was common to the Semitic races. Mesha, king of Moab, in like manner devoted the inhabitants of Nebo, 7,000 in number, to destruction in the name of ‘Ashtar-Chemosh. (See the Stele of Dibân, lines 14-17, in Dr. Ginsburg’s The Moabite Stone.)
Unto this day — That is, to the time when this record was first written, long before the chronicler borrowed it from his sources.