Jeremiah 35:6

"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, forever: 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 wherein ye sojourn. And we have obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, in all that he charged us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, or our daughters; nor to build houses for us to dwell in; neither have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed: but we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us. But it came to pass, that when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up into the land, that we said, Come, and let us go to Jerusalem for the fear of the army of the Chaldeans, and for fear of the army of the Syrians; so we dwell at Jerusalem."

"We have obeyed ... in all that he commanded us ..." (Jeremiah 35:8). The obedience of the Rechabites to their principles was indeed astounding. "All of their days, they had obeyed all of Jonadab's injunctions; all of them obeyed at all times and in all particulars."[13] No greater contrast to the disobedience of Israel could possibly have been imagined.

It should be noted that, "What is praised here is not Jonadab's injunctions, but the faithful obedience of his sons."[14]

The superiority of the obedience of the Rechabites over that of Israel is inherent in a number of elements: (1) the person they obeyed was only a mortal man; Israel was disobeying God. (2) Jonadab had long been dead, some 250 years in fact; God lives forever. (3) There was no one to repeat the commands of Jonadab and insist upon their obedience; but God had sent prophet after prophet to reaffirm God's commandments and to urge Israel to obey. (4) Jonadab gave no great blessings to his children; but God had endowed Israel with an entire kingdom. (5) Jonadab's orders were very difficult to obey and had caused much hardship upon the Rechabites, but God's commandments for Israel were not encumbered with such great difficulties. "And yet Jonadab's orders were obeyed; and God's were not!"[15]

Jeremiah 35:11 is an explanation by the Rechabites that their dwelling in Jerusalem was of necessity and not because they were willing to violate the injunctions of their ancestor.

The following verses of this chapter stress the contrasts between the obedient Rechabites and the disobedient Israelites, which we have just enumerated.