Matthew 2:18

“A voice was heard in Ramah,

Weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children;

And she would not be comforted,

Because they are not.”

The prophecy is taken from Jeremiah 31:15. There Israel is seen in terms of Rachel, the mother of the clans of Joseph and Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh. But the sons of her slave would also be seen as hers, and apparently Leah's children as well. For Rachel is seen as weeping for all Israel. And why is she weeping? In context it is because her children have gone. They are either dead or in exile. They ‘are not'. And now another child has gone into exile, and others are dead, slaughtered by man's inhumanity to man

But why was she weeping in Ramah? The answer is that it was because Ramah is where she was buried. So she is seen as weeping in her grave at Ramah for her beloved children, both dead and exiled, originally at the time of Jeremiah, but continuing on to the present day. And her weeping is not just for them. It is a weeping that reaches out into the future because of what is yet to come on Israel. It is a weeping that will not cease until she sees all her children restored. For just prior to the words in Jeremiah is his description of the hoped for restoration of God's people (Jeremiah 31:10). And her weeping is to precede this hope of theirs, a hope which will be fulfilled ‘in the latter end' (Jeremiah 31:17), when her weeping will be rewarded by their restoration, when the new covenant will be made with them by God which will transform their hearts (Jeremiah 31:31).

So, says Matthew, do not be surprised at this cause of weeping which results from Herod's cruelty and slaughter, and at the need for the One Who represents Israel to go into exile. Such weeping is but a sign that God's purposes are still going forward, even in the midst of suffering. And in this case it is a sign that Messiah is coming, indeed is almost here. Soon He will return from exile bringing with Him the hopes of Israel. Here Israel's weeping is seen as being brought to its climax in view of the good time that is coming, which will result from the coming of Jesus, Who will bring them to God's perfect rest. The experience is coming to its ‘filling full', after which it will cease. (In future there will be weeping, but it will be because of the machinations of evil men, including many Jews, who will persecute God's people. But it will no longer be a weeping of hopelessness).

EXCURSUS on Rachel's Weeping.

We must apply similar methods of interpretation to Matthew 2:17 as we have done previously. Here we read, ‘Then was fulfilled (or ‘filled to the full') that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted for they are not.” ' It is then often asked, ‘what has Ramah to do with Bethlehem-judah?' As we have already seen it need not have anything to do with it. It may simply be indicating where Rachel was to be found in her tomb at Ramah. However, other significant facts are that Ramah was on the way between Bethel and Bethlehem, and that Rachel's death was also in fact connected with Bethlehem (Genesis 35:16). But that is clearly not the full answer, and again we must consider its context, this time in Jeremiah 31:15.

In Jeremiah's prophecy these words in reality stand very much on their own, but the principle behind them is nevertheless clear and that is that it is Israel who are seen as weeping, and this in terms of their deceased ancestress Rachel. And she is weeping because many of their people are either dead or in exile, because ‘they are not'. As with the quotation from Hosea he has in mind those who are far from the land and ‘in exile'. This Ramah was presumably the Ramah near Gibeon (Joshua 18:25) some miles north of Jerusalem, in Benjamite territory. In contrast Bethlehem-judah was six miles south of Jerusalem in the territory of Judah. But Jeremiah's words are not based on the association of the one with the other but almost certainly on the fact that Rachel was thought to be buried near Ramah.

(In 1 Samuel 10:2 it is said to have been at Selsah, on the border of Benjamin, which is not definitely identified, but must have been near Ramah, while Genesis 35:16; Genesis 35:19 says that it was ‘on the way to Ephrath', the old name for Bethlehem, a road that passed through what would later be Benjamite territory by Ramah. It was thus on the approach to Bethlehem (see also Ruth 4:11). We must remember that in ancient days geography was not an exact science and places would therefore be identified by the nearest well known name).

But the vivid picture is not of the children of Ramah. It is of Rachel in her tomb at Ramah weeping because all her children, the whole of Israel, were suffering (we must remember that she was mother of Joseph and Benjamin, and therefore grandmother of Ephraim and Manasseh, and that the children of her maid would also be seen as hers, but she is probably to be seen as weeping for all Israel and Judah). And her weeping was because they were no longer before her eyes. Many were in Exile, others were dead. The verse is then followed by the promise that there is hope for their latter end (Jeremiah 31:17), hope following the Messianic feast (Jeremiah 31:13) when presumably Rachel (Israel) will be able to cease weeping, and when will be fulfilled the change of heart and mind in Israel that God requires (Jeremiah 31:31). Thus Rachel's weeping is seen by Jeremiah as something that would carry on until the end times when through God's activity it would cease because God's work of restoration would begin. It was therefore very appropriate for what Matthew saw as the beginning of ‘the last days', the times of the Messiah. For the Messiah would remove the necessity for this kind of weeping. And to Matthew this exiling of the One Who represented Israel, and the accompanying needless destruction of twenty or so male children by Herod, was therefore to be seen as the last throes of the old dispensation as Rachel (Israel) continued to weep for her children.

Rachel's death was a tragic one, although not in an uncommon way, for she died in childbirth (Genesis 35:16) as did so many women in those days. Her tears would thus have been seen as very apt for a situation where children were involved. And the fact that she was depicted as weeping for children who were lost to her, and would continue to do so until they were brought home, made it very applicable to this case. Thus Matthew is simply pointing out that Rachel (as representative of mother Israel) wept whenever children who were born in Israel ‘were not' as a result of man's inhumanity. And that was why this slaughter of Israel's children was to be seen as one of ‘her' causes of weeping, and a very significant one because it heralded the coming of the Messiah. He is taking the verse as signifying the perpetual grief of the symbolic Rachel for Israel's suffering, in whatever form that suffering takes, right up to the end times, and especially in such cases as this, until her children return to her. She is therefore also weeping for the return of the Exiled One. So the present generation are to be comforted by the thought of the past, and to see their suffering as part of the completion of the process whereby finally the good times would come through the appearance of the Messiah.

Each time Israel suffered, a partial fulfilment of these words was to be seen. At such times Rachel was to be seen as weeping in Ramah, especially when the problems related to children. And now when the coming of the Messiah seemed to be bringing hope to the world, it was not, says Matthew, to be seen as surprising that this weeping was intensified as a result of the sufferings that accompanied His birth. This weeping then represented and symbolised the birth pangs of the Messianic age which had been so clearly portended (Isaiah 13:8; Isaiah 26:17; Jeremiah 4:31; Jeremiah 6:24; Micah 4:9. See also 2Es 16:38-39). And ‘Rachel' therefore felt them most intensely. Who better to have in mind in view of how she died? Here at last Jeremiah's words were being ‘filled to the full'

So Matthew clearly saw that the weeping for these children in Bethlehem was all part of the weeping of ‘Rachel', a weeping that was expected in the end to result in the coming of the Messianic Banquet (Jeremiah 31:13). And he knew that it would speak to the hearts of those who were still weeping, awaiting His coming. He may well also have wanted the actual mothers of these slain sons to know that ‘Rachel', as one who understood such situations, was weeping for them, something which would help to comfort all who were finding their suffering difficult to understand. It would make them aware that God was not insensitive to their cries, but knew what was happening (compare Luke 18:7). Matthew may even himself have known people who were still grieving over their lost sons in Bethlehem. But even more was he aware of unbelieving Israel's constant weeping as they looked ahead in hope of deliverance. Thus again, far from being a naive application of words that were irrelevant, this is to be seen as something pregnant with meaning concerning the coming of Jesus, and as having a direct message at that time for his Jewish readers. The weeping of Israel was soon coming to an end. For Israel would finally be ‘called out of Egypt' in Jesus, and true Israel would genuinely respond to Him in their hearts, and would no longer need to see themselves as ‘in Exile' and away from where God could be worshipped (John 4:20), and this all because of the activity of Jesus.

This then links his use of this prophecy, with the previous one. When God ‘called His son out of Egypt' it followed a time when Rachel truly had been weeping for her children, for the Gentile world had been seeking to destroy them in the form of Pharaoh's annihilation of the sons of Israel (Exodus 1:15), a destruction that Herod was now imitating. But one son survived that annihilation and led Israel out of Egypt. Now Rachel is weeping for her children again, but again one child will survive the annihilation, and will ‘lead His people out of Egypt'. It is to be the end of Rachel's weeping.

End of EXCURSUS.