The second section of Caleb’s genealogy refocuses on Hezron (1 Chronicles 2:21). The connection between Judah and Machir/Jair is nowhere else addressed in the entire Old Testament, though both of them are regarded as sons of Manasseh (Numbers 32:39–41).
At the age of sixty years, Hezron married the daughter of Machir, the eldest son of Manasseh who had settled in the Transjordan (Numbers 32:39–41), the area in which the names in the following verses are located.1 She was his Aramean concubine and bore him Segub, the father of Jair whose conquests of twenty-three towns in Gilead took place under Moses. The link between Judah and Manasseh shows how the tribes became mixed, probably at an early stage already.2 These are documented in Numbers 32:41 and Deuteronomy 3:14.3 These towns and villages were situated to the north-eastern Transjordanian borders of Israel and are not very well defined.
Geshur, together with Maacath, is included among the lands which Israel was not able to take for Manasseh (Joshua 13:13). The total of sixty towns (1 Chronicles 2:23) includes Jair’s twenty-three and another thirty-seven at Kenath, all of which could be grouped under Jair’s name. (Deuteronomy 3:4, Deuteronomy 3:14; Joshua 13:30)
The question at this point is, Why is this seemingly unattached and unimportant information supplied in the Scriptures, seeing that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work
(2 Timothy 3:15)? The Chronicler must have had a good reason for doing this that may no longer apparent to the modern reader.
Selman has suggested this somehow ties in with David’s marriage to Maacah, the daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur (1 Chronicles 3:2; 2 Samuel 3:3).4 This marriage persisted over the years and produced Absalom, David's only son by Maacah (1 Chronicles 3:2; 2 Samuel 3:3). Absalom fled to his maternal grandfather Talmai in Geshur after slaying Amnon for the rape of their sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13:37–38). Absalom had a daughter and her name was also Maacah. Abijah, King Rehoboam’s son by Absalom's daughter, was crowned prince by his father (2 Chronicles 11:18–22).5
In conclusion, it appears that these connections of the house of David with the Transjordan Arameans were viewed as a tradition to be conserved and recalled. It also reflects that innate human desire to go back to one’s roots and explore the terrain as comprehensively as possible.
But there may be another interesting connection between Judah and Manasseh. The only two tribes that survived the exile were Judah and Benjamin, and by recalling the Manasseh connection, the Chronicler may be implying that a remnant of the great Joseph half-tribe, Manasseh, had been preserved.
The closing birth report in 1 Chronicles 2:24 is a direct continuation of the genealogy of Caleb recorded in 1 Chronicles 2:18–20.
A difficulty emerges as to the precise translation of 1 Chronicles 2:24, specifically as to who Asshur’s parents were. The ESV states, Caleb went into Ephrathah the wife of his father, Hezron and she bore him Asshur.
This would imply that Caleb impregnated his stepmother, which is unlikely because Ephrathah is already identified as his wife in 1 Chronicles 2:19, whom he married after the death of his first wife Azubah.
The NIV and several other translations (e.g., KJV, NASB) follow the Masoretic text (MT), which is the traditional Hebrew text behind most modern translations of the Hebrew Bible. It renders the verse as follows: “After Hezron died in Caleb-Ephrathah, Abijah the wife of Hezron bore him Ashhur the father of Tekoa” (1 Chronicles 2:24). The MT seems rather confusing at this point. Williamson suggests that the phrase Abijah the wife of Hezron
is a scribal gloss, an additional note usually inserted by the scribe tasked with copying the text.6 Or, says Williamson, it is a parenthetical statement belonging to 1 Chronicles 2:21 that originally provided the identity of the unnamed daughter of Machir in 1 Chronicles 2:1 but was later misplaced.
Most commentators tend to emend the text, based on the LXX and Vulgate, and understand Ashhur to be the son of Caleb and Ephrath (NEB, RSV).7 Williamson provides what probably is the preferable translation: After the death of Hezron, Caleb went into Ephrathah and she gave birth to a son named Ashhur (the father of Tekoa).
8 The textual difficulties permit such a reading, and Chronicles has already identified Ephrath as Caleb’s wife (1 Chronicles 2:19, 1 Chronicles 2:50; 1 Chronicles 4:4).9
Mark Boda helpfully concludes this section of the genealogy with the following explanation of the continued importance of the line of Caleb: "The Chronicler continues to build the line of Caleb-Ephrathah, here identifying for the first time a connection to a key town in Judah (Tekoa) that lay ten miles south of Jerusalem (see 2 Chronicles 11:6).”10
21 Afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead, whom he married when he was sixty years old, and she bore him Segub.