Key Text: For unto this day they drink none, but obey their father’s commandment (Jeremiah 35:14).
Even though the origins of the Rechabites are obscure, it is made clear, however, by verse 19, that Rechab was “the father of the house of the Rechabites” and his son, Jonadab (called Jehonadab), was leader of the later house of the Rechabites who migrated to Judah. Jewish tradition has it that the Rechabites were among the Levite singers who entered the temple service by the marriage of their daughters to priests. Jehonadab was a zealous worshiper and he also set his descendants a vow of asceticism (self-denial for spiritual reasons): that “they should drink no wine, nor plant fields or vineyards, nor build nor live in houses through their generations” vv 6 – 7. The prohibition of agriculture expressed disdain of such pursuits as unmanly and degrading. The total abstinence from wine was a reaction to the drunken orgies of the Canaanite fertility rites as an attempt to preserve the condition of a desired lifestyle.
At the command of the Lord, the prophet Jeremiah brought “the whole house of the Rechabites” into “the house of the Lord” (i.e., a room in the Temple) and offered them wine. But they refused: “We will drink no wine; for Jehonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever; neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any; but all your days ye shall dwell in tents; that ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers…and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.”
Jeremiah used this example of obedience to demonstrate why the Lord had seen fit to bring destruction on the Southern Kingdom through the agency of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion. Had the Israelite people been as faithful to Him and His covenant with them as the Rechabites had been to the injunctions of their ancestor, they would not have incurred His wrath and precipitated their own destruction: “Behold, I will bring upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil that have pronounced against them; because I have spoken unto them, but they have not heard; and I have called unto them, but they have not answered.” AMEN!
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