Matthew 2:18

θρῆνος καὶ omitted before κλαυθμὸς with אB against many later authorities. The omission brings the quotation into closer verbal agreement with the Hebrew; but the words are found in the LXX., and were probably meant to express the Hebrew intensive word by an addition.

18. Jeremiah 31:15, in LXX. Jeremiah 38:15. In a singularly touching passage, Rachel, the mother of the tribe of Benjamin (whose tomb was close to Bethlehem; Genesis 35:19), is conceived of as weeping for her captive sons at Ramah—some of whom were possibly doomed to die; cp. Jeremiah 40:1.

The Evangelist pictures Rachel’s grief re-awakened by the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem.
The Ramah alluded to by Jeremiah, generally identified with the modern Er-Rama, was about five miles N. of Jerusalem, and in the tribe of Benjamin. There is no proof of another Ramah near Bethlehem. The analogy therefore must not be pressed.
As the text now stands emended St Matthew’s citation agrees with the Hebrew (the repetition of ‘for her children’ in the last line in the Hebrew text is doubtful), and preserves the beauty of the parallelism. In the quatrain each couplet is in cognate parallelism [see Introduction, p. xxxviii.]; the second line advancing on the first, and further there is a parallel relation between lines 1 and 3 and 2 and 4. In the LXX. this beauty is lost; the reading of the Vatican codex is: φωνὴ ἐν Ῥαμὰ ἠκούσθη | θρήνου καὶ κλαυθμοῦ καὶ ὀδυρμοῦ | Ῥαχὴλ� [codex A. -ης ἐπὶ τῶν υἱῶν αὐτῆς] | οὐκ ἤθελε παύσασθαι ἐπὶ τοῖς υἱοῖς αὑτῆς [codex A. παρακληθῆναι and om. ἐπὶ τ. υἱ. αὐ.] ὅτι οὐκ εἰσίν |.

Observe here the loss of the parallelism by the genitive cases, line 2. It is an interesting example of St Matthew’s sense of poetical form, and of the greater excellence and beauty of his version as compared with the LXX.