We will drink no wine - The reason is given above. Their whole religious and political institution consisted in obedience to three simple precepts, each of which has an appropriate spiritual meaning: -

1

Ye shall drink no wine - Ye shall preserve your bodies in temperance, shall use nothing that would deprive you of the exercise of your sober reason at any time; lest in such a time ye should do what might be prejudicial to yourselves, injurious to your neighbor, or dishonorable to your God.

2

Neither shall ye build house - Ye shall not become residents in any place; ye shall not court earthly possessions; ye shall live free from ambition and from envy, that ye may be free from contention and strife.

3

But - ye shall dwell in tents - Ye shall imitate your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of the patriarchs, who dwelt in tents, being strangers and pilgrims upon earth, looking for a heavenly country, and being determined to have nothing here that would indispose their minds towards that place of endless rest, or prevent them from passing through temporal things so as not to lose those that are eternal.

There must necessarily be more in these injunctions than meets the eye in the letter of this account.

Jonadab.

2 Kings 10:15 And when he was departed there, he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him: and he saluted him, and said to him...

1 Chronicles 2:55 And the families of the scribes which dwelled at Jabez; the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and Suchathites...

Ye shall. Jonadab, a man of fervent zeal for the pure worship of God, and who lived about three hundred years before this time, had probably practised these rules himself; and having trained up his children to habits of abstemiousness, he enjoined them and their posterity to adhere to them. In these regulations he seems to have had no religious, but merely a prudential view, as is intimated in the reason annexed to them that ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers. And this would be the natural consequence of observing these rules; for their temperate mode of living would very much contribute to preserve health and prolong life; and they would avoid giving umbrage, or exciting the jealousy or envy of the Jews, who might have been provoked, by their engaging an succeeding in the principal business in which they themselves were engaged, agriculture and vine-dressing to expel them their country; by which they would have been deprived of the religious advantages they enjoyed. In

1 Chronicles 2:55 And the families of the scribes which dwelled at Jabez; the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and Suchathites...

, they are termed scribes, which intimates that they were engaged in some kind of literary employments.

Leviticus 10:9 Do not drink wine nor strong drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest you die...

Numbers 6:2-5 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite...

Judges 13:7,14 But he said to me, Behold, you shall conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing...

Luke 1:15 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink...

1 Corinthians 7:26-31 I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be...

all.

Jeremiah 35:10 But we have dwelled in tents, and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.

Genesis 25:27 And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.

Leviticus 23:42,43 You shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths...

Nehemiah 8:14-16 And they found written in the law which the LORD had commanded by Moses...

Hebrews 11:9-13 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob...

1 Peter 2:11 Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;

that ye.

Genesis 36:7 For their riches were more than that they might dwell together...

Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long on the land which the LORD your God gives you.

1 Chronicles 16:19 When you were but few, even a few, and strangers in it.

Psalm 105:12 When they were but a few men in number; yes, very few, and strangers in it.

Ephesians 6:2,3 Honor your father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise...

Canaan
Canaan was the inheritance which the Israelites won for themselves by the sword. Their ancestors had already settled in it in patriarchal days. Abraham "the Hebrew" from Babylonia had bought in it a burying-place near Hebron; Jacob had purchased a field near Shechem, where he could water his flocks from his own spring. It was the "Promised Land" to which the serfs of the Pharaoh in Goshen looked forward when they should again become free men and find a new home for themselves. Canaan had ever been …
Archibald Sayce—Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations