Yeremia 35:2

35:2 “Go to the Rechabite community. ¹  Invite them to come into one of the side rooms ²  of the Lord’s temple and offer them some wine to drink.”

Yehezkiel 41:5-6

41:5 Then he measured the wall of the temple ³  as 10½ feet, ⁴  and the width of the side chambers as 7 feet, ⁵  all around the temple. 41:6 The side chambers were in three stories, one above the other, thirty in each story. There were offsets in the wall all around to serve as supports for the side chambers, so that the supports were not in the wall of the temple.

[35:2]  ¹ tn Heb “the house of the Rechabites.” “House” is used here in terms of “household” or “family” (cf. BDB 109 s.v. בַּיִת 5.a, b).

[35:2]  sn Nothing is known about the Rechabite community other than what is said about them in this chapter. From vv. 7-8 it appears that they were a nomadic tribe that had resisted settling down and taking up farming. They had also agreed to abstain from drinking wine. Most scholars agree in equating the Jonadab son of Rechab mentioned as the leader who had instituted these strictures as the same Jonadab who assisted Jehu in his religious purge of Baalism following the reign of Ahab (2 Kgs 10:15, 23-24). If this is the case, the Rechabites followed these same rules for almost 250 years because Jehu’s purge of Baalism and the beginning of his reign was in 841 b.c. and the incident here took place some time after Jehoiakim’s rebellion in 603 b.c. (see the study note on v. 1).

[35:2]  ² sn This refers to one of the rooms built on the outside of the temple that were used as living quarters for the priests and for storage rooms (cf. Neh 13:4-5; 1 Kgs 6:5; 1 Chr 28:12; 2 Chr 31:11 and compare Ezek 41:1-14).

[41:5]  ³ tn Heb “house” throughout Ezek 41.

[41:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “six cubits” (i.e., 3.15 meters).

[41:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “four cubits” (2.1 meters).