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.
Ver. 18. Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning] How impatient was Jacob in the loss of Joseph; David of Absalom, &c. Grief for sin (than which none more deep and soaking), is set forth by this unparalleled lamentation: Zechariah 12:10 ; Mat 5:4 "Blessed are they that mourn" (πενθουντες), as men do at the death of their dearest children. But let such say to God, as St Jerome (ad Julian.) adviseth a friend of his in like case, Tulisti liberos, quos ipse dederas: non contristor quod recepisti: ago gratias quod dedisti: thou hast taken away whom thou hadst given me: I grieve not that thou hast taken them, but praise the Lord, that was pleased to give them.
Rachel weeping] That is, Bethlehem, in the way whereto Rachel died in childbirth, and was buried. "Give me children, or else I die:" give her children, and yet she dies. Well might Bethlehem weep, if at this massacre there were (as some affirm it) 14,000 infants butchered.
For her children] Those dear pledges and pieces of ourselves; called cari dears, by the Latins, and φιλτατα by the Greeks, darlings, in whom is all our delight, Ezekiel 24:24; yet are they certain cares, but uncertain comforts, a
And would not be comforted] This confutes him in Plautus, that said, Mulier nulla dolet cordicitus ex animo, these mourned beyond measure, utterly refusing to be comforted by any fair words of the murderers excusing the matter (likely) to the miserable mothers, and promising amends from the king by some other means, or by any other way. But immoderate sorrow for losses past hope of recovery is more sullen than useful: our stomach may be bewrayed by it, not our wisdom; and although something we may yield to nature in these eases, yet nothing to impatience.
Because they were not] A just judgment of God upon them for their unnaturalness to the Son of God, whom they shut out into a stable. The dulness and dissoluteness of these Bethlehemites required thus to be raised and roused up as by the sound of a trumpet or report of a musket; happy for them, if they had hearts "to bear the rod, and who had appointed, it,"Micah 6:9. But we many times mistake the cause of our misery, groping in the dark as the Sodomites, crying out upon the instrument, seldom reflecting; our minds being as ill set as our eyes, we turn neither of them inwards.
a Lambin. in Menech. Plauti,Acts 1:1,26, Scene 1. Domi domitus fui usque cum charis meis. Filius dicitur a φιλος .