8 Thus have we obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab our father in all that he hath charged us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters;

Yahweh regarded with such favour the fidelity of the Rechabites to the paternal traditions of their house, that He decrees the continuance of their posterity amid all the circumstances tending to their obliteration.

There is little to be known accurately of the state of the tribes and families in the east, but, doubtless, if we could know matters as they are known to God, we should discover the descendants of Rechab, intact somewhere among the peoples of the east.

They will, doubtless, be revealed in their ancestral identity in the great day of manifestation that comes with Christ, and will as doubtless occupy an honourable place in the mortal arrangements of the Kingdom of God. But, however this may be, we cannot mistake the emphasis of the divine endorsement in the case of a virtue which is little to be found in our day in these countries of the west; a virtue, not only of obedience, but of obedience to parents.

This is a very unpopular virtue in our day. It had become so in the days of Jesus, who condemned the Rabbinical traditions by which a man was absolved from all obligations towards his parents on the payment of a sum to the temple. It remains the fact (however men may disregard, or may have forgotten the fact), that to the Lord God of Israel, who is the Creator, Upholder, and Proprietor of all things, it is well pleasing, and a matter of command from Him to us, that,

"children obey their parents,"

and honour the hoar head, and be respectful and merciful to the aged and infirm.

Seasons 1.97.