Rachel weeping for her children

“Rachel weeping for her children” (Jeremiah 31:15 // Matthew 2:18)

?It was a dark, dark day for Israel. The unthinkable had just happened. Their archenemy, the world empire of Babylon, had conquered their land and destroyed their capital city of Jerusalem, along with its temple. The slaughter and bloodshed were horrible! Hundreds, if not thousands died in the massacre!

The Babylonians were now preparing to physically remove all but the poorest survivors and march them to Babylon as exiles. One of the staging points for that departure was a little town called Ramah, just 12 miles north of Bethlehem.

You can imagine the anguish of these captives. Their country had been conquered. Their homes and in many cases, family members had been slaughtered. And they were now being prepared for a long march to live out the rest of their lives in a foreign, enemy land.

One of the exiles mixed in with the refugees was a prophet named Jeremiah. To say Jeremiah was unpopular would be an understatement.?He had warned that God would use Babylon to judge Israel for her sin. Jeremiah had even warned that if Israel resisted Babylon, Babylon would crush them. This was a message no one in Israel wanted to hear! It would be like a prophet today saying that God was going to use China to conquer America and that America should just lay down its arms and accept this conquest.

People thought Jeremiah was a traitor and they hated him! I’m sure their hatred for him only grew worse when the commander of the Babylonian imperial guard found Jeremiah among the captives, released him from his chains, and said if Jeremiah came to Babylon with him, he would look after him and take care of him. Otherwise, Jeremiah was free to go anywhere he wanted. In fact, if Jeremiah wanted to go to the Babylon-appointed ruler of Judea, that ruler would take care of Jeremiah also.

Jeremiah was being rewarded for issuing prophecies favorable to Babylon—prophecies that had come from God, but that the Israelites had rejected as treasonous. Jeremiah stayed under the protection of that Babylon-appointed ruler until that ruler was assassinated. Jeremiah was then kidnapped and forcibly taken to Egypt.

Jeremiah later wrote of these events in Jeremiah chapters 31-44. In Jeremiah 31, he gives a prophecy of hope about how God will one day bring Israel back from exile and bless them abundantly. In the middle of this prophecy Jeremiah 31:15 adds a sour note saying, “This is what the LORD says: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping…” In the context of Jeremiah this is talking about the deep sorrow and weeping of those whose loved ones have been slaughtered by the Babylonians, as the exiles wait in Ramah—not far from Bethlehem—to be marched off to captivity in Babylon.

Then Jeremiah 31:15 continues, “Rachel, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.” The children of Israel are viewed as Rachel’s children in this verse. You may remember from Genesis that Rachel was the beloved wife of Jacob who was also known as Israel. Her children are no more because the Babylonians have slaughtered them!

But in Jeremiah 31, the prophet follows up this sour verse saying,?“This is what the LORD says: Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears.”?This is not, of course, expecting these bereaved mothers in Jeremiah’s time to immediately stop mourning! Jeremiah is looking to the distant future and prophesying hope. The exile will not last forever. God will save his people!

This prophecy in Jeremiah was couched in the middle of a chapter on hope—that despite how dark the days under Babylonian captivity looked, God had not forgotten his people. He would one day restore and save his people.

In Matthew chapter 2, Matthew records another dark, dark day for Israel. Israel was under the rule of a ruthless, oppressive and paranoid king named Herod. In chapter 2, Matthew tells the story of how Herod sent soldiers to kill all the baby boys under two years old in Bethlehem and the surrounding region. In 2:13-15, Matthew, reflects on the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem by King Herod. Matthew compares this with the slaughter of “Rachel’s children”—the children of Israel—by Babylon almost 600 years earlier.

Matthew’s point seems to be that despite how dark the days looked under Herod, and how terrible was his slaughter of the Bethlehem infants, God was about to bring Israel the hope he had promised through Jeremiah. That promise would be fulfilled in Jesus, the newly born Messiah who would save his people—all who devoted their lives to him in faith. He would save them from the penalty of their sin at his first coming, and save them from all suffering and oppression when he returns in power and glory—fully in line with what Jeremiah had prophesied.