Ch 2:18

“RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN”

(Jer. 31:15).
A brother writes: “Has not the 31st chapter of Jeremiah reference to the children of Israel when in captivity in Babylon (see verses 15, 16)? How does Matthew apply it to the slaying of the infant children at the command of Herod (Matt. 2:17)?”

ANSWER.—This is a perennial question. Some forty-two years ago it was well answered by the late editor of the Christadelphian. We cannot do better than reproduce his words:—
Matt. 2:18—(“In Rama, was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not,”) is, of course, a quotation from Jeremiah 31. applied by Matthew to the baby-slaughter at Bethlehem; but it is not a tenable position to maintain that the words in Jeremiah refer to that incident. A reference to the prophet will show that the event contemplated in his words, is the captivity of the Jews in foreign lands; and that the returning again from the land of the enemy, spoken of in verses 16–17, (on which it is customary to rely to prove the salvation of children), has reference to a national restoration from that captivity. Matthew does not quote the latter part of Jeremiah’s words. They would have been entirely inapplicable to the subject he was illustrating.
Children, per se, are nothing in the arrangements having reference to a future life. “The flesh profiteth nothing.” It is a condemned thing. It is of the earth, earthy—destined to return to the ground under the Adamic sentence which hath “passed upon all men.” Its only salvation is by connection with the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, and this connection can only be acquired by faith—by a belief and obedience of the truth, of which very young children are utterly incapable. “Without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6).
But how came Matthew to apply to the babes of Bethlehem part of a prophecy which affirms the “returning again of the children from the land of the enemy?” The answer is, that what Jeremiah says of the national captivity of Israel was fulfilled on a limited scale in connection with Herod’s barbarity toward the children of Bethlehem. Rachel wept for her children. The mothers of the city where Rachel was buried, bemoaned their slaughtered little ones with a bitterness that refused consolation. In this, the words of Jeremiah—spoken of another event altogether—were fulfilled; not that those words referred to this weeping and mourning, but that they were over again fulfilled—an uncontemplated, unintended fulfilment; but so dramatically coincident with the words of Jeremiah, that Matthew, who wrote for the Jews, and seems to have availed himself of every opportunity to interweave the narrative of Christ’s life with the Scripture which they accredited—naturally snatched the advantage of pointing to the coincidence. More than this could not be intended. Matthew does not quote that part of the prophecy relating to the reinstatement of the children. This would obviously have been improper, because this part of Jeremiah’s words was entirely inapplicable; and in such a connection would have been suggestive of an idea subversive of the general teaching of the word.


. Vol. 45: The Christadelphian: Volume 45. 2001 (electronic ed.) (355–356). Birmingham: Christadelphian Magazine & Publishing Association.