And they said, We will drink no wine; for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, ye nor your sons for ever;
Jeremiah 35 stages a test in the temple: the prophet sets wine before a clan called the Rechabites and tells them to drink. They refuse, and the chapter asks why these outsiders kept a father's word for centuries while Judah would not keep God's.
Jonadab, also spelled Jehonadab, lived when Ahab ruled Israel. One writer reads the rule he gave his family as a response to the state of the nation around him.
Jeremiah 35:6 tells us that Jehonadab commanded his sons not to drink wine, not to build houses, not to sow seed or plant a vineyard, but to live in tents. The reason is clear. He saw that the state of Israel under Ahab was offensive to God, and he wanted to keep himself and his family separate from it.
It is easy to read the refusal as a rule about alcohol. One writer points out that the same command bans things nobody calls sinful.
It is plain God does not tempt anyone to evil. The very fact that the Lord told the prophet to bring them into the temple, set wine before them and tell them to drink shows that this is no question of moral evil. Here is convincing proof. Besides the charge to drink no wine, Jonadab had also commanded them not to build a house, not to sow seed, not to plant a vineyard, but to live in tents all their days. There is clearly nothing wrong in itself in a man having a house or sowing seed in a field. These were tests of their obedience, so they were as much bound to keep from sowing seed and planting vineyards as from drinking wine. The test used here was wine, I suppose because the others could not be applied so easily.
The setting made it easy to give in. The place was holy, the man offering the wine was God's servant, and witnesses stood by.
It must have been a strong temptation. God's faithful and suffering servant took them into the sacred house of God, and among the witnesses was a "man of God." In such a holy place, and invited by such men, they might have thought they were released from their usual obligation. But they stood the test.
Their father Jonadab was a distant ancestor, and his charge said "forever." One writer counts the years it had already run.
Jonadab lived during Ahab's reign, about 850 years before Christ's birth. What happens in Jeremiah 35 comes much later, in the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, about 600 years before Christ's birth. So some 250 years lie between Jonadab's command and the Rechabites' obedience, which is 8–10 generations. They had understood that the passing of time made no difference to God here.
God's target was Israel, not the clan. The sting lay in who these obedient people were: outsiders.
And here were these Gentiles, these strangers, living in tents in obedience to their father's command. How faithful they were to their promise! How they honoured their father! Meanwhile Israel refuses just as plainly to listen to the Lord. It was not that God had not taken pains with Israel. Jonadab had never toiled so hard nor so persistently with his sons: he had no prophets to send to them.
One writer marks where a rule handed down from a father runs out.
God fully acknowledged their loyalty as sons, and rewarded it. But in a day of ruin or judgment, only the word of the living God can give strength to the soul and shed divine light on the path. The sons of Jehonadab could not do this. Their rule of life could not be adjusted to the new circumstances that came upon them. This is where any human creed or system shows its weakness.
God answered their refusal with a promise sworn on His own name. One writer turns that promise back on the reader.
The Lord was so pleased with their obedience to their father, and with their faithfulness to their pilgrim life, that He pledged His own name to keep a line of "sons of Jonadab" going to the end of time. The question for us is, are we among them? Do we chase the intoxicating pleasures of this world that wine stands for? Do we build houses, as though we were here to stay?
- Command — Jonadab barred his family from wine, houses, fields and vineyards. That kept them separate from a nation that had become offensive to God.
- Content — Building and sowing are not sins, so the ban on wine was never about wine. The whole charge was a test of obedience.
- Constancy — About 250 years and eight to ten generations later, the family still kept that command. They refused even when a prophet offered the cup inside the temple.
- Contrast — Outsiders honoured a dead father's word. Judah ignored a living God who kept sending prophets. That gap was the whole point.
- Crown — God pledged His own name that Jonadab would never lack a man to stand before Him. That is how much He values obedience. Yet a rule handed down from a father could not replace God's own word when disaster came.
neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor shall ye have [any]; but all your days ye shall dwell in tents, that ye may live many days in the land where ye sojourn.
Jonadab's charge to his family covered far more than wine. It reached to houses, crops, vineyards, and tents. Why would a father bind his children to a life like that, and why does God praise it centuries later?
Wine draws the attention here, but it is one clause of a single instruction. One writer warns against pulling it out on its own:
It is obvious that you cannot make this a teetotal question. The whole instruction is one. It relates as much to house-building, seed-growing and fruit-growing as it does to wine.
Sowing a field or owning a house breaks no law of God, and that is exactly the point. The value of the rule lay in the obedience it drew out, not in the things themselves. A promise went with it:
Here is convincing proof that the point is not moral evil. Besides the charge to drink no wine, their father had also commanded them, "You shall not build a house; you shall not sow seed; you shall not plant or have a vineyard, but you shall live in tents all your days." There is clearly nothing wrong in itself in a man having a house or sowing seed in a field. No one thinks so — no one but a madman. Yet these were tests of their obedience. They were as much bound to keep from sowing seed and planting vineyards as from drinking wine. The test used here was wine, I suppose, because the others could not have been applied so easily. Jonadab put all this before them as a motive for obedience on the earth: "that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn."
Taken together, the five refusals sketch a whole way of life. One writer takes them one at a time, and finds the marks of a Nazarite — a person set apart to God by vow:
Firstly, to abstain from wine, which represents the intoxicating covetousness of the world. Secondly, to refrain from building a house. That is, to refrain from settling down on the earth for good. Thirdly, to refrain from sowing grain, as if one were expecting something, even if it were only a year of harvest. Fourthly, to refrain from planting a vineyard. That is, to refrain from growing what would sooner or later lead to giving up one's Nazariteship. How many believers have lost theirs by failing to watch this point! Fifthly, to dwell in tents, as true sons of Abraham, as pilgrims and sojourners in the land of promise.
The phrase "where you sojourn" is striking, because this was their own country. The choice to stay unsettled in it was deliberate:
Was it the sense of the hopelessness of things outwardly that led Jonadab to be a stranger and a pilgrim among his own people? Did he realise that a land which rejected the Lord and despised His word was no place for him to settle? For him and his children, the life of strangers. For him, no building of houses and no planting of vineyards. Nothing tied him to this earth, and nothing here even looked like a portion for him.
How far should children copy such a rule? An inherited rule is the easier road, and it carries its own risk:
It is always easier to follow tradition than the written word of God. Tradition does not exercise the conscience, and it spares us the difficulty — sometimes a serious one — of giving reasons for what we do... What a father hands down to his son may not be bad in itself; it may have been good, at least for a time. But it sets up a false standard and a human authority in the soul. Even if this human authority does not deny the authority of God's word, it will certainly give His word second place.
The way to honour Jonadab is not to copy his tent. It is to share the judgment about his times that produced it:
He saw the evil and the general ruin that followed the glorious reigns of David and Solomon. That sight made him feel the need of a very narrow walk, and of a return to "what was from the beginning," taught by the patriarchs, in contrast to the looseness around him. May we also be true children of Jehonadab the son of Rechab in this time of the end. Not by outward practices that leave the heart far from God, but by the moral conduct those practices pictured.
- One rule. Wine, houses, seed and vineyards form one command. Pull out the wine alone and you miss the point.
- One test. Nothing on the list is wrong in itself. That proves the issue was obedience, not morality.
- One picture. Each clause paints a refusal to settle: no craving for the world, no foothold, no crop to wait for, no vineyard.
- One protest. Living as strangers in their own land was Jonadab's verdict on a country that despised God's word.
- One caution. A family tradition, however good, can take the place that belongs to God's word. Hold the principle, not just the practice.