Machbenah
Machbenah is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Judea in modern-day Israel. Known today as Khirbet Hebra. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Machbenah appears solely in 1 Chronicles 2:49, within the genealogical records of Judah. The text states that Shaaph, a son of Caleb's concubine Maacah, was the father of Machbenah. In the genealogical conventions of Chronicles, being the "father" of a place often means being its founder or the ancestor of its inhabitants. Machbenah thus appears to have been a small settlement in the southern Judean territory established or populated by descendants of Caleb. The Calebite clans occupied significant portions of the Negev and southern hill country, centered around Hebron and extending south into the wilderness. While Machbenah itself plays no role in any recorded biblical narrative, its inclusion in the Chronicler's genealogies serves an important purpose. These lists demonstrate the continuity between the patriarchal promises, the tribal allotments under Joshua, and the post-exilic community's claim to ancestral lands. Every named settlement, however small, reinforced the returning exiles' identity as the rightful heirs of the covenantal promise of land.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Machbenah has been tentatively identified with Khirbet Hebra (also written Khirbet el-Qubeiqa by some scholars), located in the northern Negev region of southern Israel. The proposed site lies in the semi-arid zone between the Judean hill country and the Negev desert, consistent with the southern Calebite territory described in Chronicles and Joshua. Archaeological surveys of the northern Negev have documented numerous small Iron Age settlements in this region, reflecting a period of agricultural expansion during the Israelite monarchy. Without systematic excavation at the proposed site, the identification remains speculative. The broader region has yielded evidence of fortified farmsteads and water collection systems typical of Judean settlement in this marginal rainfall zone.
Verse Appearances (1)
1Chr
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]