Matthew 2:17

‘Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying,'

Again this suffering was seen as adding to the ‘filling full' of the warnings that Scripture had given. For Scripture regularly emphasises the sufferings that Israel had yet to face, in the same way as they had at the Exile. For there it had included the loss of their children to exile, and prior to that the deaths of children in their own land in the face of the merciless invading armies. Large numbers had been slaughtered. Large numbers had gone into exile. And now it was to happen again, even if on a smaller scale. But the scale did not matter. The grief would be the same for those involved. One of their children would disappear into exile in Egypt, and others would be slain in the land. It was all part of the expected ‘Messianic sufferings', the birth pangs that would introduce the last days.

Note how Matthew uses a special formula for introducing Jeremiah's prophecies, which is only used of them. It is probably only a technicality, but it demonstrates what thought he had put into composing these formulae, and interestingly the formulae that introduce Jeremiah are the ones that have no stress on ‘in order that' (hina or hopows). Perhaps it was because they were in a savage context.