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Jeremiah 35: What the Passage Says

72 claims across 19 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 35 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the days of King Jehoiakim, the LORD tells Jeremiah to bring the Rechabite family into the temple and offer them wine. They refuse, because their ancestor Jonadab commanded his descendants never to drink wine, build houses, plant vineyards, or own fields, but to live in tents; they have kept that command, and are in Jerusalem only because Nebuchadnezzar's invasion drove them there. God then contrasts their obedience to a human ancestor with Judah's refusal to listen to him, announces that he will bring on Judah all the disaster he has pronounced, and promises Jonadab that his line will never lack a man to stand before him.

Claim by Claim

  1. 35:1
    • A word came to Jeremiah from the LORD.
    • This word came in the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah.
  2. 35:2
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to go to the house of the Rechabites.
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to speak to the Rechabites.
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to bring them into the house of the LORD, into one of the chambers.
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to give them wine to drink.
  3. 35:3
    • Jeremiah took Jaazaniah son of Jeremiah, son of Habaziniah.
    • Jeremiah took Jaazaniah's brothers.
    • Jeremiah took all of Jaazaniah's sons.
    • Jeremiah took the whole house of the Rechabites.
  4. 35:4
    • Jeremiah brought them into the house of the LORD.
    • He brought them into the chamber of the sons of Hanan son of Igdaliah.
    • Hanan son of Igdaliah was a man of God.
    • That chamber was beside the chamber of the officials.
    • The chamber of the officials was above the chamber of Maaseiah son of Shallum.
    • Maaseiah son of Shallum was the keeper of the threshold.
  5. 35:5
    • Jeremiah set bowls full of wine before the sons of the house of the Rechabites.
    • Jeremiah set cups before them.
    • Jeremiah told them to drink wine.
  6. 35:6
    • They said they would drink no wine.
    • They said Jonadab son of Rechab was their father.
    • They said Jonadab had commanded them.
    • They said Jonadab's command was that neither they nor their sons should drink wine forever.
  7. 35:7
    • Jonadab commanded that they should not build a house.
    • Jonadab commanded that they should not sow seed.
    • Jonadab commanded that they should not plant a vineyard.
    • Jonadab commanded that they should not have any of these things.
    • Jonadab commanded that they should dwell in tents all their days.
    • The purpose was that they might live many days on the face of the land where they sojourn as strangers.
  8. 35:8
    • They obeyed the voice of Jonadab son of Rechab their father in all that he charged them.
    • They drank no wine all their days.
    • This abstinence included themselves, their wives, their sons, and their daughters.
  9. 35:9
    • They did not build houses to dwell in.
    • They had no vineyard, no field, and no seed.
  10. 35:10
    • They dwelt in tents.
    • They obeyed and did according to all that Jonadab their father commanded them.
  11. 35:11
    • Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came up into the land.
    • When that happened, they said to one another to come and go to Jerusalem.
    • They said this for fear of the army of the Chaldeans.
    • They said this for fear of the army of the Syrians.
    • They dwell at Jerusalem.
  12. 35:12
    • The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
  13. 35:13
    • The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to go and tell the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
    • The LORD asked whether they would not receive instruction and listen to his words.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
  14. 35:14
    • The words of Jonadab son of Rechab have been carried out.
    • Jonadab commanded his sons not to drink wine.
    • His sons have drunk no wine to this day.
    • They obeyed their father's commandment.
    • The LORD has spoken to the people, rising early and speaking.
    • The people did not listen to the LORD.
  15. 35:15
    • The LORD sent to them all his servants the prophets, rising early and sending them.
    • The prophets said that every man should turn from his evil way.
    • The prophets said they should amend their doings.
    • The prophets said they should not go after other gods to serve them.
    • The prophets said they would dwell in the land which the LORD gave to them and to their fathers.
    • The people did not incline their ear.
    • The people did not listen to the LORD.
  16. 35:16
    • The sons of Jonadab son of Rechab performed the commandment their father commanded them.
    • This people has not listened to the LORD.
  17. 35:17
    • The LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
    • The LORD will bring upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil he has pronounced against them.
    • The reason is that he spoke to them and they did not hear.
    • The reason is that he called to them and they did not answer.
  18. 35:18
    • Jeremiah spoke to the house of the Rechabites.
    • Jeremiah said the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
    • The Rechabites obeyed the commandment of Jonadab their father.
    • The Rechabites kept all his precepts.
    • The Rechabites did according to all that he commanded them.
  19. 35:19
    • The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
    • Jonadab son of Rechab shall never lack a man to stand before the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

35:1
Jehoiakim ruled Judah from about 609 to 598 BC; he was put on the throne by Egypt and later became a subject of Babylon, and this episode belongs to the years when Babylonian forces were operating in the region. "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants that Jewish tradition does not pronounce aloud.
35:2
The Rechabites were a small clan, linked in the Bible with the Kenites, who lived as herdsmen in tents instead of settling as farmers. "House of the Rechabites" means the family or clan, not a building. The temple's "chambers" were rooms built around its courts, used for storage, for meetings, and as offices and lodgings for priests and officials; a gathering held in one of them was in public view of temple staff.
35:3
This Jeremiah, Jaazaniah's grandfather, is a different man from the prophet Jeremiah who is telling the story. The name was common.
35:4
"A man of God" was a standard term for a prophet. The "keeper of the door" was not a porter but a senior priestly officer who controlled access to the temple and its treasuries; there were only a few, ranking just below the chief priest. The "princes" of the King James are royal officials, not sons of the king.
35:5
Setting out full pitchers and cups in a temple room, in front of witnesses, turned a private habit into a public test. Refusing a drink poured for you was a pointed act, and that is exactly what the scene is designed to produce.
35:6
Jonadab son of Rechab lived roughly two and a half centuries before this scene; 2 Kings 10 shows him riding with Jehu during his purge of Baal worship in the northern kingdom. "Our father" here means ancestor, not the speakers' own father.
35:7
Building a house, sowing seed and planting a vineyard are the three marks of settled farming life; a vineyard in particular takes several years to bear and ties a family to one plot of ground. Refusing all three meant remaining migrant herdsmen who moved with their flocks, and wine was the ordinary everyday drink of a settled household, so the ban on it belongs with the rest. To be "strangers" in the land (the rendering's "outsiders") means living as resident foreigners in a country where you hold no land of your own.
35:11
Spelled Nebuchadrezzar in the King James, closer to the Babylonian form of the name; he ruled Babylon from 605 to 562 BC. The "Chaldeans" were the people who held power in Babylon, so the word is used for Babylonians generally, and the "Syrians" of the King James are the Arameans, from the region north-east of Israel. 2 Kings 24:2 describes raiding parties from both harassing Judah in Jehoiakim's last years. For people with no walled town of their own, fortified Jerusalem was the only refuge.
35:13
"LORD of hosts" translates a Hebrew title, tseva'ot, meaning massed armies or hosts, earthly, heavenly, or both; English has no single word for it, so translations vary between "of hosts" and "of Armies." "Receive instruction" translates a word meaning correction or discipline: the training a parent or a teacher gives, not information.
35:14
"Rising early and speaking" is a Hebrew idiom for doing something urgently and again and again, the way a person gets up at dawn to keep at a task. It is not a statement about the time of day.
35:15
Prophets were messengers who carried God's words to the people out loud, in public. They were not fortune tellers; most of their message was about how people were living right then.
35:17
"Evil" in the King James usually means disaster or calamity, harm that falls on people, rather than moral wickedness. Here it means the destruction already announced against Judah.
35:18
The King James says they kept his "precepts." A precept is simply a rule someone is told to follow.
35:19
"Shall not want" means shall not lack. "To stand before me" is an idiom for serving as someone's attendant, the way a servant stands in the presence of a master or an official waiting on orders; used of God it describes those who serve in his presence. The promise is of an unbroken line of descendants who do so.

Read Jeremiah 35