Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 2:18

"A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; And she would not be comforted, because they are not." — Matthew 2:18 (ASV)

In Rama was there a voice heard — Here again, we have an example of Matthew applying a passage—which originally related directly to the events of its own time—to the events he is narrating.

The tomb of Rachel, in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem (Genesis 35:19), had likely been a sacred place in the land from the day the pillar marking it was first set up. It was so in the days of Samuel (1 Samuel 10:2), and the language of Jeremiah shows it was still significant in his time (Jeremiah 31:15).

In his depiction of the suffering and slaughter of Judah’s captives, the image that best embodied Jeremiah’s sorrow for his people was that of Rachel, the great “mother in Israel.” He pictured her looking out from the “high place” of her tomb (as the name Ramah means) and seeing the shame and death of her children at the other Ramah, a few miles to the north, weeping for her bereavement.

Historically, we find from Jeremiah 40:1 that this Ramah was the place where prisoners were taken so that Nebuzaradan could assign those marked for death to their fate, others to exile, and still others to remain as slaves in the land.

Matthew felt that this same picture was being reproduced in his own day. The tomb of Rachel, standing just one mile north of Bethlehem, was as familiar to its people as it had been in Jeremiah’s time. Therefore, the imagery was just as natural for Matthew to use as it was for Jeremiah. While the Ramah of Jeremiah 40:1 was about seven or eight miles further north on the border of Benjamin, some geographers have suggested that the name was also given to a location nearer to Rachel’s tomb.