Jeremiah 31:15-17

3. The disconsolate (Jeremiah 31:15-17)

TRANSLATION

(15) Thus says the LORD: Listen! In Ramah lamentation is heard! bitter weeping! Rachel is weeping over her children. She refuses to be comforted concerning her children, because they are no more. (16) Thus says the LORD: Restrain your voice from weeping, your eyes from tears. For there is a reward for your labor (oracle of the LORD) when they shall return from the land of the enemy. (17) There is hope for your latter end (oracle of the LORD) when sons return to their borders.

COMMENTS

With brilliant poetic imagination Jeremiah represents Rachel (Rahel, KJV) in her grave near Bethlehem lifting up her voice in bitter lamentation over the recent fate of her children. Rachel, who had pined for children all her life (Genesis 30:1), died with sorrow in giving birth to Benjamin (Genesis 35:18-19). It is most appropriate that this one who loved children so much should here bemoan the loss of them. The meaning of the name Rachel (ewe) adds force to the prophet's description. He hears the cry of the ewe in Ramah (literally, on the hill-top) bleating for her lambs. Rachel was the mother of Benjamin and Joseph and, through the latter, of Ephraim and Manasseh. As Ephraim was the leading tribe of the north it is likely that Rachel was regarded as the mother of Israel, the ideal representative of the northern kingdom. In a bit broader sense, Rachel symbolizes all the mothers of the entire nation who had lost sons through death and deportation.

Rachel is disconsolate because her children are being slain and snatched away. No one can comfort her in this moment of sorrow because her children are not, i.e., they are dead. The following verses seem to indicate that the prophet primarily has in mind the symbolic death of exile. But since many were slain when the Assyrians and Babylonians conquered the people of God, and since many died in captivity in foreign lands, an allusion to literal death cannot be absolutely eliminated from the expression they are not. The question arises as to whether Rachel is weeping over the deportations of Israelites to Assyria or of Jews to Babylon. One cannot be absolutely sure. But in view of the fact that Jeremiah 31:18-20 speak exclusively of Ephraim it is likely that it is the early Assyrian deportation which is in mind.

The mention of Ramah raises an exegetical problem. Which Ramah does the writer have in mind and why does he mention the place? TWO places called Ramah are prominent in the Old Testament. Both of them were some miles north of Jerusalem.[262] Some think that the reference is to another Ramah in the vicinity of Bethlehem which is otherwise unknown in the Old Testament. Still others fed that the term Ramah is not a proper name at all but means simply a mountain height. On the whole, however, it is best to regard Ramah as a definite location though it is impossible to determine which of the two places of this name is intended.

[262] One Ramah is mentioned in Joshua 18:25 and was five miles north of Jerusalem; the other Ramah, the home town of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:19; 1 Samuel 25:1) about four miles north-west of Jerusalem.

Why is Ramah mentioned in this passage? Various suggestions have been made. Some think that Ramah is mentioned because Rachel was buried near there. But nowhere is Ramah explicitly designated as the site of Rachel's tomb. Others think that Ramah is mentioned because this was the spot at which the exiles were assembled before being slain or deported.[263] Jeremiah himself was taken in chains to Ramah (Jeremiah 40:1; Jeremiah 39:11-12). He may have actually heard the women of Israel weeping and wailing as they watched the cruel fate of their sons. Still another view is that Ramah is mentioned only to indicate the distance at which the lamentation was heard. According to this view the weeping originated at Bethlehem but was heard as far away as Ramah. On the whole the last view seems to be the most satisfactory.

[263] The mention of Ramah in Isaiah 10:29 seems to indicate that it was the scene of some special massacre by Sennacherib in the days of king Hezekiah.

Matthew cites Jeremiah 31:15 as being fulfilled in the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem by Herod. Because of the inspired statement of Matthew some commentators have argued that Jeremiah 31:15 is a direct prophecy of what would transpire in Bethlehem centuries later.[264] However the word fulfilled as used in Matthew 2:17 probably only means that the words in Jeremiah aptly express the event which Matthew is recording. The language used by Old Testament writers to describe events of their own or previous times is often so full and rich that it can be appropriately used to describe New Testament events which occurred in similar circumstances and were of similar import. In such cases the language of the Old Testament is said to have been fulfilled in the New Testament.[265] Thus the slaughter of the Bethlehem infants was not the fulfillment of a prediction of Jeremiah, but only of certain words spoken by the prophet.[266] Rachel's grief was reawakened by the slaughter of the innocent babes of Bethlehem.

[264] Laetsch (op. cit., p. 250), has, perhaps, the most capable defense of this position. According to Laetsch, Rachel is introduced as bewailing her children because her tomb was located at Bethlehem where the infants were to be slain.

[265] Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: Matthew and Mark (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1964), p. 17.

[266] J. W. McGarvey, The New Testament Commentary: Matthew and Mark (Cincinnati: Chase and Hall, 1875), p. 30,

The word fulfilled does not seem to have the same force in every passage of the New Testament where it occurs. Some time ago J. W. McGarvey suggested that the word was used by Matthew in the second chapter of his Gospel in three different ways. He writes:
The three quotations from the prophets contained in this chapter (6, 15, 18) belong to and illustrate three distinct classes of such quotations which are found in the New Testament, and which especially abound in Matthew. The first, concerning the birth-place of Jesus, is strictly a prediction, for it refers directly to the event. The second, concerning the call out of Egypt, is an example of words used with a double reference, having both a primary and secondary reference and fulfillment. Such predictions are sometimes called typical, because they are originally spoken concerning a type and find another fulfillment in the antetype. The third, concerning the weeping at Bethlehem, is an example in which the event fulfills the meaning of words used by a prophet, though the words had originally no reference at all to this event. It is a verbal fulfillment, and not a real fulfillment, as in the other two cases.[267]

[267] Ibid.

In Jeremiah 31:16-17 God wipes away the tears from the cheek of the disconsolate Rachel. Using the language of the prophet Azariah (2 Chronicles 15:7) Jeremiah assures the mother of Israel that there will be a reward for her work. The work refers to the parental weeping for her children.[268] Rachel is not weeping in vain. Her children will one day return to their homeland. Though the present prospects are exceedingly dismal. there is hope for the future of Israel.

[268] Others take the work to be the travail of childbirth.