The Obedience of the Rechabites

351 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, 2 Go into the house of the Rechabites, and have talk with them, and take them into the house of the Lord, into one of the rooms, and give them wine. 3 Then I took Jaazaniah, the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons and all the Rechabites; 4 And I took them into the house of the Lord, into the room of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, the man of God, which was near the rulers' room, which was over the room of Maaseiah, the son of Shallum, the keeper of the door; 5 And I put before the sons of the Rechabites basins full of wine and cups, and I said to them, Take some wine. 6 But they said, We will take no wine: for Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, gave us orders, saying, You are to take no wine, you or your sons, for ever: 7 And you are to make no houses, or put in seed, or get vine-gardens planted, or have any: but all your days you are to go on living in tents, so that you may have a long life in the land where you are living as in a strange country. 8 And we have kept the rules of Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, in everything which he gave us orders to do, drinking no wine all our days, we and our wives and our sons and our daughters; 9 Building no houses for ourselves, having no vine-gardens or fields or seed: 10 But we have been living in tents, and have done everything which Jonadab our father gave us orders to do. 11 But when Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, came up into the land, we said, Come, let us go to Jerusalem, away from the army of the Chaldaeans and from the army of the Aramaeans: and so we are living in Jerusalem.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 35:1-11

Commentary on Jeremiah 35:1-11

(Read Jeremiah 35:1-11)

Jonadab was famous for wisdom and piety. He lived nearly 300 years before, 2 Kings 10:15. Jonadab charged his posterity not to drink wine. He also appointed them to dwell in tents, or movable dwelling: this would teach them not to think of settling any where in this world. To keep low, would be the way to continue long in the land where they were strangers. Humility and contentment are always the best policy, and men's surest protection. Also, that they might not run into unlawful pleasures, they were to deny themselves even lawful delights. The consideration that we are strangers and pilgrims should oblige us to abstain from all fleshly lusts. Let them have little to lose, and then losing times would be the less dreadful: let them sit loose to what they had, and then they might with less pain be stript of it. Those are in the best frame to meet sufferings who live a life of self-denial, and who despise the vanities of the world. Jonadab's posterity observed these rules strictly, only using proper means for their safety in a time of general suffering.