name. So that these Rechabites, at least, had horses--as many Arab
tribes have now--and whether they rode them, or used them to draw
their goods about in carts, like many other wild tribes, they seem to
have gained from Jonadab the name of Rechabim, the sons of Rechab,
the sons of the rider, or the sons of the chariot.

Of Jonadab the son of Rechab, you heard three Sundays since, in that
noble passage of 2 Kings x. where Jehu, returning from the slaughter
of the idolatrous kings, and going to slay the priests of Baal, meets
Jonadab and asks him, Is thy heart right--that is, sound in the
worship of God, and determined to put down idolatry--as my heart is
with thy heart? We hear of him and his tribe no more till the days
of Jeremiah, 250 years after, in the story from which my text is
taken. What Jonadab's reasons may have been for commanding his tribe
neither to settle in towns, nor till the ground, it is not difficult
to guess. He may have dreaded lest his people, by settling in the
towns, should learn the idolatry of the Israelites. He may have
dreaded, likewise, lest they should give way to that same luxury and
profligacy in which the Israelites indulged--and especially lest they
should be demoralized by that drunkenness of which the prophets
speak, as one of the crying sins of that age. He may have feared,
too, lest their settling down as landholders or townsmen would cause
them to be absorbed and lost among the nation of the Israelites, and
probably involved in their ruin. Be that as it may, he laid his
command upon his tribe, and his command was obeyed.

Of the after-history of these simple God-fearing folk we know very
little. But what we do know is well worth remembering. They were,
it seems, carried away captive to Babylon with the rest of the Jews;
and with them they came back to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, they had