Jer. 35 By the obedience of the Rechabites, Jer. 35:1–11, God condemneth the Jews’ disobedience, Jer. 35:12–17. The Rechabites are blessed, Jer. 35:18–19.

This is another evidence that the prophecies of this book are not left us in that order wherein they were delivered, for those which we had in the two or three foregoing chapters being in the time of Zedekiah must needs be ten or eleven years after this.

These Rechabites had their name from Rechab their father, who, as appears from 1 Chron. 2:55, descended from Hemath, who was a Kenite, who is also called Hobab, Judg. 4:11 (unless it may be Hameth who was the son of Hobab). This Hobab was Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, as appears from Judg.

This term, the man of God, doth in Scripture signify a prophet sometimes; but whether it so signifieth here, and if it doth, whether it relateth to Igdaliah or Hanan, is a question.

It is uncertain whether father here signifies their immediate parent, or (which is more probable) their progenitor; it is most likely it referreth to that Jonadab of whom we read 2 Kings 10:15, who was the father (that is, the progenitor) of this family of the Rechabites, at three hundred years…

The last words of the verse probably give us a reason of the former; they were no native Jews, but strangers amongst them, who commonly are envied when they are observed to thrive too much, or to live splendidly; and that envy of the natives of the place where they sojourn exposeth them to their…

Tents; movable habitations, which they could with little labour remove from place to place, as they had convenience to feed their flocks: this was their ordinary way of living, until necessity compelled them to come and live in Jerusalem.

When the Chaldean army came into the land, they saw there would be no quiet abode for them any where but in some fortified place. The Syrians joined with the Chaldeans in this war, as we read, 2 Kings 24:2.

God, in this revelation of his mind to the prophet, expoundeth to him why he had set him to bring the Rechabites into the temple, and commanded him to set wine before them, and invite them to drink of it, viz.

This is but the same threatening confirmed, which we have often met with before, concerning the ruin of this people, only the meritorious cause of it is further amplified, their not paying that homage to God which these Rechabites paid to an earthly parent, and had been steady in the payment of now…

For ever here signifies the ever of the Jewish state or church; whether the promise relates to the abiding of Jonadab’s family, when many families of the Jews were quite rooted out, cut off, and extinct, or to some special favour that God would show them, or to some place of office they should have…