Jeremiah 35:19

Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.

Jonadab ... shall not want a man to stand before me - there shall always be left representatives of the clan to worship me (Jeremiah 15:1; Jeremiah 15:19); or "before me" means simple existence, for all things in existence are in God's sight (Psalms 89:33). The Rechabites returned from the captivity. E.H. Plumptre (Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible') suggests that the words [ `omeed (H5975) lªpaanay (H6440)] "stand before me" are liturgical. The tribe of Levi is chosen to "stand before" the Lord (Deuteronomy 10:8; Deuteronomy 18:5; Deuteronomy 18:7). This meaning, 'ministering before me,' is given in the Targum of Jonathan. The blessing thus will mean, the Rechabites were solemnly adopted into the families of Israel, and incorporated into the tribe of Levi. Their consecrated life gained for them this honour. That they ministered in the temple in the times when the Second Book of Psalms was collected, appears from the title in the Septuagint of Psalms 71:1, 'To David, of the sons of Jonadab, and the first who were taken captive.' A son of Rechab is mentioned in Nehemiah 3:14 as cooperating with the priests, Levites, and princes in restoring the wall. Compare also 1 Chronicles 2:55, where they appear among "the scribes," who doubtless were Levites, after the return from Babylon. Hegesippus (in Eusebius, 'H.E.,' 2:23) mentions that when the scribes and Pharisees were stoning James the Just (the brother of our Lord), one of the priests, of the sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, who are mentioned by Jeremiah the prophet, cried out, protesting against the crime.

Thus it appears the Rechabites were a recognized body in the temple just before the last destruction of Jerusalem. Benjamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century, mentions that he found Rechabites near El-Jubar (Pumbeditha). They observed the Rechabite rules of abstemiousness, and were 100,000 in number, governed by a prince Salomon han-Nasi, who traced his descent to David's house. Wolff found near Lenaa a tribe, Beni-Khaibr, who identified themselves with the sons of Jonadab. He calls them elsewhere B'ne-Arhab, and says the B'ne Israel of Dan live with them.

Remarks:

(1) Jonadab, the son of Rechab, three hundred years before the time of Jeremiah, had directed his sons to live a nomad life, dwelling in tents, not in fixed dwellings, in order to be ready at any moment to move wheresoever necessity might require. Though we are under no obligation to follow the letter of this rule we are bound to follow the spirit of it. "We here have no continuing city;" and if we be true disciples of Jesus, "we seek one to come" (Hebrews 13:14). Like the patriarchs who "sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles, and looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," we should regard our present body as but a tent soon to be taken down, and we should be looking for the "building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1).

(2) Moreover, Jonadab charged his descendants to drink no wine. It is often wise to deny ourselves lawful pleasures, if we thereby escape the danger of falling ourselves, or leading others by our example to fall into hurtful and unlawful indulgences. If, however, the believer, in the exercise of his Christian liberty, does not altogether abstain from such pleasures, he must take care, by a guarded and temperate use of them, to keep clear of sinful excess in lawful enjoyments. More are ruined by the unlawful use of lawful things than even by things absolutely unlawful; because the difficulty in the case of the former is to know where to draw the boundary line between the temperate and excessive use of them; whereas, in the case of the latter, there is no difficulty, as they are altogether forbidden. The young especially ought ever to remember Peter's warning, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11).

(3) But the chief lesson designed by the Spirit that we should learn from the filial obedience and consequent reward of the Rechabites is this, If Jonadab their father's commands, on a point not morally obligatory in itself, were so scrupulously and universally kept by his children, how much more ought the eternally-obligatory and righteous commands of the God and Father of Israel and of us all be implicitly obeyed! Yet Israel and Judah refused to hear God and His prophets, though "rising early and speaking to them." Therefore, as the promised good was to attend the obedient children of Jonadab, so should the threatened evil be brought upon the disobedient people of God (Jeremiah 35:17). Let us learn, since we recognize God as our Father, to give Him the honour which belongs to Him as such, rendering an immediate, unquestioning, and, as far as the spirit enables us, a perfect and universal obedience, that so it may be well with us, not only during our short sojourn here, "in the land where we are strangers" (Jeremiah 35:7), but also and chiefly, in the heavenly land, where we shall not be strangers, but at home forever in the blessed city of our Father and our God!