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.
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. These words, as they stand in Jeremiah, undoubtedly relate to the Babylonian captivity. Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, was buried in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem. (Genesis 35:19), where her grave is still shown. She is figuratively represented as rising from the tomb and uttering a double lament for the loss of her children-first, by a bitter captivity, and now by a bloody death. And a foul deed it was. O ye mothers of Bethlehem, methinks I hear you asking why your innocent babes should be the ram caught in the thicket, while Isaac escapes. I cannot tell you; but one thing I know, that ye shall, some of you, live to see a day when that Babe of Bethlehem shall be Himself the Ram, caught in another sort of thicket, in order that your babes may escape a worse doom than they now endure. And if these babes of yours be now in glory, through the dear might of that blessed Babe, will they not deem it their honour that the tyrant's rage was exhausted upon themselves instead of their Infant Lord? (See Keble's exquisite Hymn, entitled, "The Holy Innocents," on the appropriate words, "These were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb," Revelation 14:4.)