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Updated: September 28, 2025
I am not morally bound by an oath which I swear without full knowledge of its consequences and responsibilities." "Oath! The oath you swear! You swear no oath. Do you fancy you are joining a society of Rechabites or Carmelites, or mediæval rubbish of that kind. Don't keep so painstakingly behind the age."
JEREMIAH xxxv. 19. 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. Let us think a while this morning what this text has to do with us; and why this strange story of the Rechabites is written for our instruction, in the pages of Holy Scripture. Let us take the story as it stands, and search the Scriptures simply for it.
They were teachers and preachers rather than prophets, performing duties not dissimilar to those of Franciscan friars in the Middle Ages. They were ascetics like the monks, abstaining from wine and luxuries, as Samson and the Nazarites and Rechabites did. Religious asceticism goes back to a period that we cannot trace.
His people "would not receive instruction." Therefore were his judgments executed upon them, agreeably to his threatening; and they are left on record for our instruction. In the part acted by the father of the Rechabites, we witness the concern of a good man, that his children should mind the things of religion.
'The sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have performed the commandment of their father, which he commanded them; but this people have not hearkened unto Me. JER. xxxv. 16. The Rechabites had lived a nomad life, dwelling in tents, not practising agriculture, abstaining from intoxicants. They were therein obeying the command of their ancestor, Jonadab.
The same can be said concerning other ceremonies prescribed in the Law. The Rechabites also are cited, who did not have any possessions, and did not drink wine, as Jeremiah writes, chap. 35, 6f. Yea, truly, the example of the Rechabites accords beautifully with our monks, whose monasteries excel the palaces of kings, and who live most sumptuously!
Rapoport, in the article already referred to, seems to suspect the faulty reading: to justify it, he connects the men of Kheibar with the Rechabites and the sons of Heber the Kenite, basing his argument upon Jer. xxxv, Judges i. 16, I Sam. xxvii. 10, and I Chron. ii. 55. Neither Zunz nor Asher makes any comments upon this chapter of the itinerary.
They teach them to fear the Lord, and live in all good conscience before him. II. In the historical sketch here given of the Rechabites, we see how good people of old, were influenced by parental authority how they considered themselves bound to remember and obey the injunctions of religious ancestors, as they wished the blessing of God.
I seemed to see everything Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge.
The missionary Joseph Woolf visited Arabia in 1836, and he gives us an account of an interview he had with some of the Rechabites. No weight, however, can be attached to his fantastic stories. Joseph Halevi made many valuable discoveries of inscriptions in South Arabia, which he traversed in 1869.
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