B. The Counterpart To The Disobedience Of The Israelites: The Obedience Of The Techabites (chap. 35)
1. The Fact.
Jer_35:1-11
1The word which came unto Jeremiah from the Lord in the days of Jehoiakim 2the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying, Go unto the house of the Rechabites, and speak unto them, and bring them into the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers, 3and give them wine to drink. Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habaziniah, and his brethren, and all his sons, and the whole house 4of the Rechabites; And I brought them into the house of the Lord, into the chamber of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, a man of God, which was by the chamber of the princes, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah the son of 5Shallum, the keeper of the door [or, threshold]. And I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites pots full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink 6ye wine. But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons 7for 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 8land where ye be strangers. Thus have we obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab our father in all that he hath charged us, to drink no wine all our days, 9we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters; nor to build houses for us to dwell in: 10neither have we vineyard, nor field, nor field: but we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us. 11But it came to pass, 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.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Jer_35:1-5. The word . . . Drink ye wine. As the Rechabites did not live in houses, the house of the Rechabites must be taken in a gentilic sense. The Rechabites were a branch of that tribe of Kenites, which springing from Hobab, the brother-in-law of Moses (Num_10:29), migrated with the Israelites from the desert to Canaan, and were therefore closely connected with them politically, a well as religiously (comp. Jdg_1:16; Jdg_4:11; 1Sa_15:6; 1Sa_27:10; 1Sa_30:29). To what an extent this, especially the latter, was the case may be learned from what is said of Jonadab, the ancestor and lawgiver of the Rechabites, in the book of Kings (2Ki_10:15; 2Ki_10:23). The injunctions which, according to Jer_35:6-7, Jonadab laid on his descendants, were doubtless for the purpose of preserving their nomadic state and avoiding the evils of stationary and agricultural life. Jonadab appears to have forbidden the drinking of wine, not merely for the sake of the immediate consequences, which it might easily have, but also that the love of wine might not be the occasion of their becoming settled. The conscientiousness with which the Rechabites after three centuries still followed the commands of their ancestor, is a testimony that they held him in high honor. That he deserved this honor, and that it was shown him by others during his life-time, is seen in the respect with which Jehu treated him, taking him as a witness of his zeal in the service of Jehovah. Comp. Keil on 2Ki_10:12-17.—The
ìְùָׁëåֹú
were rooms in the buildings enclosing the fore-courts, appropriated to various uses (1Ch_28:12 coll. Jer_9:26; Jer_36:10; Jer_36:12; Jer_36:20-21; Ezr_10:6; Neh_10:38). One of these rooms, which must have been a hall corresponding to the number of the persons, was named after “the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, the man of God.” It is not known who this Hanan was. From the designation “man of Elohim,” we may infer that he was a prophet (comp. Deu_33:1; Jos_14:8; 1Sa_2:26; 1Sa_9:8; 1Sa_9:10, etc.), and from “sons” (comp. 1Ki_20:35; 2Ki_2:3; 2Ki_2:5; 2Ki_2:7; 2Ki_2:15, etc.), that the room was a place of assemblage used by him and his pupils and adherents. Maaseiah, the threshold-keeper (of which there were three, Jer_52:24; 2Ki_25:18, and who stood in rank immediately after the
ëֹּäֵï îִùְׁðֶä
. (Comp. 2Ki_23:4) is probably identical with the Maaseiah, whose son Zephaniah was a “second priest” (Jer_52:24; Jer_37:8; Jer_29:25, Jer_21:1).—Of the region inhabited by the Rechabites we have no further indication than the brief notice, 1Ch_2:55, from which we learn merely that they dwelt in the tribe of Judah. Jdg_1:16 agrees with this, where it is said of the Kenites, that they settled in the wilderness of Judah, which lies south of Arad (near the wilderness of Kadesh to the south of Hebron, Raumer, Paläst., S. 172). As they were Nomads, they needed land suited to this mode of life. There is no objection to their southern position from the approach of the enemies from the North. For they might justly fear an inundation of the whole land, and therefore sought refuge in Jerusalem betimes, before they were cut off.
Jer_35:11. Army of the Syrians. Aram is Syria in the more restricted sense. Before B. C., 738, when it became an Assyrian province, it played an important part among the foes of the Israelites (2Sa_8:3 sqq., etc.), and afterwards it still appears among their number in the train of Assyria (Isa_9:11), as here in that of Babylon (comp. 2Ki_24:2).
Footnotes:
Jer_35:5.—
ðָáְéòַ
, related to
âִáְòָä
,
âֶּáִò
, hill, designates here a larger round vessel (crater), from which the cups were filled. Comp. Gen_44:2; Gen_44:5; Gen_44:12.
