Jeremiah 31:15

This v. is specially familiar to us through St Matt. (Jeremiah 2:17 f.), who quotes it after relating the slaughter of the Innocents at Bethlehem. The prophecy is quoted as an illustration or type. The mourning at Ramah is a forecast of that bitter wailing which shall be raised by the mothers of the slaughtered babes. The geographical connexion of Ramah and Bethlehem cannot be maintained, and depends upon a statement which is probably a gloss in Genesis 35:19; Genesis 48:7, "Ephrath (the same is Bethlehem)." Ramah is mentioned first in Joshua 18:25, between Gibeon and Beeroth, five miles north of Jerusalem, and is very possibly identical with the birth-place, home, and place of burial of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:19; 1 Samuel 25:1). It was much too far from Bethlehem to be in any way immediatelyconnected with the subject in illustration of which St Matt. quotes the passage. It was at Ramah that the exiles were assembled before departing for Babylon, as described ch. Jeremiah 40:1. The appropriateness of calling upon Rachel to weep in Ramahconsists in this, that her tomb (1 Samuel 10:2 f.) was on the N. border of Benjamin, not far from Bethel which was ten miles N. of Jerusalem, and thus apparently in the neighbourhood of Ramah as well. See the whole question discussed, with views of the probable site, in Pal. Explor. Fund Quart. Statement, April 1912, pp. 74 ff. (Clermont-Ganneau and R. A. S. Macalister).