Jeremiah 35:6-8

(6-8) We will drink no wine... — We have here, as it were, the rule of the tribe or order which looked to Jonadab as its founder. Like Samson (Judges 13:4), Samuel (inferentially from 1 Samuel 1:11; 1 Samuel 1:15), and the Baptist (Luke 1:15), they were life-long Nazarites (Numbers 6:1). Jonadab’s intention was obviously to keep them as a separate people, retaining their nomadic form of life, free from the contamination of cities, or the temptations of acquired property, or the risks of attack which such property brought with it. They are now invited, and it must have seemed to them a strange invitation to come from a prophet’s lips, to break that rule, and they answer almost in the tone of a calm but indignant protest. They have been faithful hitherto, and they will continue faithful still. In the words “that your days may be long in the land” we may, perhaps, trace an echo of the fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12), viewed as extending to the relations which connect the members of an order with its head. The rule has descended to the followers of Islam, and the law of abstinence has been extended by Abdul-Wahab to tobacco. Diodoras Siculus (xix. 94) relates that the Nabathæans adopted the Rechabite rule in its completeness. Possibly they were Rechabites.