[1] It is now a ruin known as Khirbet Qeyla near the modern village of Qila, Hebron, 7 miles (11 km) east of Bayt Jibrin and about 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of Kharas.

According to the Hebrew Bible in the First Book of Samuel, the Philistines had made an inroad eastward as far as Keilah and had begun to appropriate the country for themselves by plundering its granaries until David prevented them.

[4][5] Later, upon inquiry, he learnt that the inhabitants of the town, his native countrymen, would prove unfaithful to him, in that they would deliver him up to King Saul,[6] at which time he and his 600 men "departed from Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go”.

"[11] Victor Guérin, who visited Palestine between the years 1852–1888, also identified Keilah with the same ruin, Khirbet Kila (Arabic: خربة كيلا), near the modern village by that name,[12] a place situated a few kilometres south of Adullam (Khurbet esh Sheikh Madhkur) and west of Kharas.

Guérin found here a subterranean and circular vault, apparently ancient; the vestiges of a wall surrounding the plateau, and on the side of a neighboring hill, tombs cut in the rock face.

Keilah is mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah as one of the towns resettled by the Jewish exiles returning from the Babylonian captivity and who helped to construct the walls of Jerusalem during the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes I.

Khirbet Qeila (Ruin of Keilah) is situated on a terraced, dome-shaped hill at the end of a spur that descends to the east, adjacent to a small Arab village which bears the same name.