MARRIED TO A RECHABITE

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.

Jeremiah 35:8.

The Rechabites were a people of great interest, of whom even God took notice in their strict adherence to an ancestral code: their patriarch had instructed them to build no house but live in tents, to own no fields, not farm at all, and drink no wine all the days of their lives.  Three hundred years later, in the days of the prophet Jeremiah, God was going to use them as an object lesson to His people the Israelites, so He asked Jeremiah to invite them into the house of God and offer them wine to drink.

Jeremiah invited them as directed, into a chamber of the temple complex, and lavishly offered them wine, saying, “Drink.” He did not say, “Thus saith the Lord, drink wine.”  It would have made little difference even if Jeremiah had invoked the name of the Lord in that matter.  They had respectfully followed the prophet into the house of God, and they certainly had reverence for his words, but there was a limit to which that reverence would go: so far as it did not cross the ancestral wine line.

Those Rechabites refused the wine of the prophet, stating that their ancestor of three hundred years ago had urged them not to drink wine: they, their wives, their sons and their daughters.  They had faithfully obeyed that, and were not about to break the ancient tradition even at the instance of the prophet, in the house of God. God took note of it and blessed them with an everlasting blessing (Jeremiah 35:19).

There is something of interest in the response of the spokesman for the Rechabites.  He stated that they, their wives, their sons and their daughters have rigorously kept to the custom instituted by the ancient father.  The implication was that any women who stepped out to marry a Rechabite, not being one herself, prepared herself for the lifestyle of the man she was choosing to marry.  She could not say, “Well, that is what your father told you; that is not what my father told me.”  Accepting to marry a Rechabite meant choosing to become one.  It was an implicit choice: “all our days, we, our wives, our sons …”

Next point: where a woman agreed to become a Rechabite with her husband, that became the family lifestyle.  Sons and daughters would be born into that lifestyle, grow in that practical culture of their dad and mom, and themselves become practicing Rechabites.  In the unlikely situation that a woman came into a Rechabite home with a Bachus and orgiastic culture and insisted to maintain that independent ‘modern’ lifestyle, their children were already an endangered species, for the woman is the builder or destroyer of the home (Proverbs 14:1).  It is very unlikely that a true Rechabite would marry such a woman, or proceed to keep her if she picked up that alternative culture in the course of the marriage.

Final word: If you don’t want to be a Rechabite, don’t marry one.  If you have chosen to marry a Rechabite, prepare for the package.  That is where peace will be found.  God blesses such homes with an everlasting covenant.  Amen.

From The Preacher’s diary,
January 21, 2025.