Reader! after paying due attention to the filial reverence and charity of this house of the Rechabites, pause over the history, to gather another profitable instruction from it of a spiritual nature; and consider the blessedness of minds, like the Rechabites, who live detached and unconnected, and have only moveable tents to dwell in here below. The sorrows and exercises of the world are made tenfold grievous, from the large circle in which they take in those, who are ingulphed in the world and encumbered with many cares. If we are weaned from the earth, and the things of the earth, when called upon to depart from it, we shall be soon ready, for there are then few cords to tie the soul down. The believer may say with Jonadab's posterity, let me go up to the Jerusalem which is above, where Jesus is, the Chaldeans and the Syrians are nothing to me. Oh! the blessedness of such a frame!
Jeremiah 35:3-11
3 Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habaziniah, and his brethren, and all his sons, and the whole house of the Rechabites;
4 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 Shallum, the keeper of the door:a
5 And I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites pots full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink ye wine.
6 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 for ever:
7 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 land where ye be strangers.
8 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, we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters;
9 Nor to build houses for us to dwell in: neither have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed:
10 But we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.
11 But 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.