Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 35:19

"therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever." — Jeremiah 35:19 (ASV)

Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever. —Taking the words in their simplest literal sense, they find a fulfillment in the strange, unlooked-for way in which the name and customs of the Rechabites have cropped up from time to time.

The Jewish historian Hegesippus (see Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 2.23), in his account of the martyrdom of James the Just, names the sons of the Rechabites as looking on in reverential sympathy with one whose life, like their own, carried the Nazarite type to its highest perfection. In the account Diodorus Siculus (19.94) gives of the Nabataeans—who neither sowed seed, nor planted fruit-trees, nor built houses, and enforced this rule of life under penalty of death—we can scarcely fail to recognize the Rechabite type. Benjamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century, reports that he found 100,000 Jews who were named Rechabites, living after their fashion near El Jubar and governed by a prince of the house of David.

More recent travelers, Dr. Wolff (Journal, 1829, 2:334; 1839, p. 389) and Signor Pierotti (Transactions of British Association, 1862), report that they have met tribes near Mecca, on the Dead Sea, or in Yemen and Senaar, who observed the rule of Jonadab, claimed to be his descendants, referred to Jeremiah 35:19 as fulfilled in them, and led the life of devout Jews. It is probable, however, that in these later instances we may trace the effect of the Wahhabi ascetic movement among Muslim Arabs, identifying its rule with the old practice of the son of Rechab (Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 283).

The words “stand before” have, however, in Hebrew a distinct secondary meaning. It was a definitely liturgical expression for the ministrations of the Levites who were chosen to “stand before” the Lord (Deuteronomy 10:8; Deuteronomy 18:5; Deuteronomy 18:7), and a similar meaning is prominent in Jeremiah 7:10; Jeremiah 15:19; Genesis 18:22; Judges 20:28; Psalms 134:1. The Targum of this passage, indeed, actually gives “ministering before me” as its paraphrase.

The natural inference would be that the Rechabites were by these words admitted, by virtue of their Nazarite character, to serve as Levites in the Temple—to be, in fact, a higher class of Nethinim (see Notes on 1 Chronicles 9:2; Ezra 2:43). This view is confirmed by several points:

1. By the fact that the Septuagint ascribes Psalm 71:0 to “the sons of Jonadab, the first that were led captive;”
2. That a son of Rechab is associated in Nehemiah 3:14 with priests, Levites, and nobles in repairing the walls of Jerusalem;
3. In 1 Chronicles 2:55 the Rechabites have become scribes. Furthermore, in the Vulgate (evidence of a Jewish tradition as to the meaning of the words), the proper names of the English version, “Tirathites, Shimeathites, and Sucathites,” which add nothing to our knowledge, are represented by “c anentes et resonantes et in tabernaculis commorantes” (“singing, and playing instruments, and dwelling in tents”), which unites the functions of Levites with the mode of life of the Rechabites.

So Hegesippus (as above) speaks of priests who were of the sons of Rechab in the Apostolic age.