Then they came to Gedaliah. — Of the captains thus named, Ishmael, “of the seed royal” (we have no date for determining his precise position in the line of successors) (Jeremiah 41:1), is prominent in the history of the next chapter, Johanan (the Hebrew form of Joannes or John) in that of Jeremiah 42, Seraiah and Jaazaniah are named in the parallel passage of 2 Kings 25:23, but nothing more is known of them. Netophah, to which the sons of Ephai belonged, was a town of Benjamin not far from Bethlehem (1 Chronicles 2:54; 1 Chronicles 9:16; Ezra 2:22; Nehemiah 7:26). The Maachathite, whose father is not named, was probably a naturalised alien from the small kingdom of Maachah, on the east side of the Jordan, near Argob (Deuteronomy 3:14; 2 Samuel 10:6; 2 Samuel 10:8) and Bashan (Joshua 12:5), not far from the modern Lejah.

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