Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Jeremiah 35:1-11
Jeremiah Call The Rechabites To A Gathering And Offers Them Wine (Jeremiah 35:1).
‘The word which came to Jeremiah from YHWH in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying,'
Here YHWH had sent His word through Jeremiah ‘in the days of Jehoiakim'. The time note is deliberately general and not specific. It is emphasising that the disobedience being described was common throughout the reign of Jehoiakim.
“Go to the house of the Rechabites, and speak to them, and bring them into the house of YHWH, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink.”
‘The house of the Rechabites' may here be the equivalent of ‘the family of' as it is in Jeremiah 35:3. Or it may refer to the house in which they were living as paralleled with ‘the house of YHWH', emphasising that the Rechabites were now living in ‘a house', contrary to their principles. It may have been for this last reason that YHWH put them to a further test so as to demonstrate that they were being loyal to their father's requirements, in spite of living in a house, for Jeremiah was called on to invite them into the house of YHWH, ‘into one of the chambers', and there to give them wine to drink. There were many side chambers in the court of the Temple where important people resided.
‘Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habazziniah, and his brethren, and all his sons, and the whole house of the Rechabites,'
It is noteworthy in the description of those whom he invited to the house of YHWH that both they and their fathers all have ‘Yah' in their names. (The mention of a Jeremiah is purely coincidental). We know nothing further about these people, only that they appear to be dedicated to YHWH. ‘Brothers' and ‘sons' may be intended literally, or may refer to wider relationships (he would not for example exclude the sons of his brothers) like e.g. ‘sons of the prophets'. The name Jaazaniah was found on a seal discovered at Tel en-Nasbeh from c. 600 AD
‘And I brought them into the house of YHWH, into the chamber of the sons of Hanan the son of Igdaliah, the man of God, which was by the chamber of the princes, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah the son of Shallum, the keeper of the threshold.'
Jeremiah here clearly had the use of a chamber in the Temple which was in the possession of a fellow-prophet (a ‘man of God') called Hanan, demonstrating that not all prophets were to be seen as false at this stage. Hanan was distinguished enough to have his chamber ‘by the chamber of the princes' (used by the princes when visiting the Temple) and above that of the ‘keeper of the threshold'. The keeper of the threshold was an important post in the Temple. He was not just a doorkeeper but one of three high officials whose responsibility it was to ensure that no unauthorised or unclean persons entered the Temple area (Jeremiah 52:24; 2 Kings 25:18). He thus had high authority. ‘The sons of Hanan' were probably Hanan's trainee prophets.
It appears that Jeremiah was trying to give the appearance of bringing together two groups of religious zealots who were in sympathy with him, thus disarming the Rechabites who might otherwise have wondered what he was about.
‘And I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites bowls full of wine, and cups, and I said to them, “Drink you wine.”
Once they were gathered he brought out drinking cups and wine bowls and invited the Rechabites to partake (along presumably with the ‘sons of Hanan'). Note the wider use of ‘sons' here to signify all the Rechabites. It was a typical prophetic acted out parable for Jeremiah no doubt knew what to expect.
‘But they said, “We will drink no wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, ‘You shall drink no wine, neither you, nor your sons, for ever, nor shall you build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any, but all your days you shall dwell in tents, that you may live many days in the land in which you sojourn.' ”
The Rechabites stood firm by their convictions. They refused to drink wine on the grounds that their ancestor Jonadab, the son of Rechab, had commanded them to avoid the drinking of wine in perpetuity, along with the avoidance of all the other trappings of civilisation mentioned. They were not to live in houses or involve themselves in the kind of settled life which allowed time for grain to grow and vineyards to flourish. Rather they were to live a healthy life in tents, moving from one place to another, thus living healthy and long lives and surviving for many days. The aim would appear to have been to avoid the temptations of civilisation so that they might remain true to YHWH, copying the life of Israel when they were in the wilderness, and of course following the nomadic life of their own ancestors. The covenant that Jonadab had made may well have been a reaction to the ‘civilisation' introduced by Jezebel, for they were probably already living in this way in accordance with their own lifestyle. Jonadab seemingly turned it into a ‘virtue'. The fact that Jehu had sought an alliance with Jonadab suggests that in his day the Rechabites were admired by the common people because of their simple way of living which was a reminder of ‘the great days in the wilderness'. (Note how these Kenites were now seen as native-born Israelites)
In fact by living the kind of lifestyle that they did wine would not be as important for them as it would be for people in cities, for they could move camp regularly and could always ensure that they encamped by a pure spring. In contrast those who lived in cities often had to depend on water from cisterns which as it became staler and more fouled was unpleasant to drink to say the least. In such circumstances wine was a more pleasant, and often even a more necessary, alternative. (Compare Paul's advice to Timothy in Ephesus where the water was notorious for giving people sickness - 1 Timothy 5:23).
“And we have obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, in all that he charged us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, or our daughters, nor to build houses for us to dwell in, nor have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed, but we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.”
They stressed their loyalty to the requirements laid down by their ‘father' in everything that he had required of them, a loyalty which was carried on in the family tradition. There was no loose living among the Rechabites. They lived disciplined lives and were obedient to the covenant by which they had been bound.
“But it came about, when Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came up into the land, that we said, ‘Come, and let us go to Jerusalem for fear of the army of the Chaldeans, and for fear of the army of the Syrians,' so we dwell at Jerusalem.”
They were aware, however, that their claim appeared a little incongruous in the light of the fact that they were actually dwelling in houses in Jerusalem, so they pointed out that the only reason why they were living in Jerusalem was because they had sought refuge there from invaders. They wanted Jeremiah to know that the single reason for their presence was their fear of the armies of the Chaldeans and the Aramaeans who were harassing the land of Judah and would simply have gobbled up the Rechabites. Once they had gone the Rechabites would return to their previous way of living.