The descendants of Rekhav, who abstain from drinking wine and do not settle down permanently, symbolize absolute adherence to the ancient ancestral command. This is a lesson for Israel, that they must keep God's commands. But why does this adherence deserve an extreme Divine promise?

The prohibition against settling down might not stem from a nomadic perception, but rather from experience that teaches that settling down leads by necessity to forgetting God and ultimately to idol worship, as the book of Devarim warns many times in anticipation of Israel's entry into the land.

Additionally, farmers whose lives were dependent on the seasons of the year and on the forces of nature deified these forces and worshipped them. Therefore, the Torah is concerned about the dangers of agricultural life in the land of Israel, the chief of which is immersion in idolatry, which will lead to the removal of the people from their land.

Courtesy of the Virtual Beit Midrash, Yeshivat Har Etzion