Matthew 2:16-18

SLAUGHTER OF THE INFANTS

16-18. Herod's cruelty was simply horrific, killing his wife and three sons Antipater, only five days before he died; all the Maccabean family; and all others who were even suspected of political rivalry. So now he sends forth and deluges Bethlehem with the blood of the innocent infants, taking all, indiscriminately, two years old and younger, so as to make sure that he got the right one, as he was determined at any cost to hold fast the royal scepter. See how wonderfully God defeats the devil in the interest of his true people! While Herod was ransacking all Bethlehem, and cutting the throat of every infant, so as to make sure that he got Jesus, He was perfectly safe in His mother's arms, far away in another continent, so that Herod had all of his slaughter for nothing. Jeremiah 31:15, with prophetic ear, long centuries antecedent to it, hears the awful weeping in Bethlehem: “A voice was heard in Rama, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning: Rachel weeping for her children, and was not willing to be comforted, because they are not.” Rama is the name of the country in and about Bethlehem. Rachel's Tomb is in full view of Bethlehem, and only a mile distant. Here, long centuries after she is dead, she is described as weeping over her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are dead. The simple solution of the matter is, that Jeremiah, who was a brilliant poet, here turns loose his poetic imagination, personifying the weeping mothers of Bethlehem, whose dear babes were thus slaughtered, by Rachel, a mother in Israel, whose body is there with them sleeping in the dust. It is a strong figure, representing this dear mother, who had been so long dead, as now waking and weeping over her slaughtered children.