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Mat_2:18. Jer_31:15 (freely quoted according to the Septuagint) treats of the leading away of the Jews to Babylon, whose destiny Rachel, the ancestress of the children of Ephraim, bewails. According to the typically prophetic view in Matthew, the lamentation and mourning of Rachel, represented by the prophet, has an antitypical reference to the murdering of the children of Bethlehem, who are her children, because she was the wife of Jacob, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin (Gen_35:18). And this reference was all the more obvious that, according to Gen_35:19,[370] Rachel was buried at Bethlehem (Robinson, I. p. 373). According to Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Piscator, Fritzsche, Rachel is regarded as the representative of Bethlehem, or of the mothers of Bethlehem. But why, in keeping with the antitypical view of the prophet’s words, should not Rachel herself appear as lamenting over the massacre of those children? Rama, however, where, according to the prophet, that lamentation resounded, is here the type of Bethlehem.
Regarding the position of Rama (now the village er Ram), near to Gibeah, two hours to the north of Jerusalem, belonging at one time to Ephraim, at another to Benjamin, and on its identity, which is denied by others, with the Ramah of Samuel (Gesenius, Thes. III. p. 1275; Thenius, Winer, von Raumer, Keim), see Graf in the Stud. u. Krit. 1854, p. 858 ff.; Pressel in Herzog’s Encykl. XII. p. 515 f. There the exiles were kept in custody, Jer_40:1.
ΚΛΑΊΟΥΣΑ ] The participle, which in general never stands for the finite tense (in answer to de Wette), has here its government either with ἠκούσθη (Fritzsche) or with οὐκ ἤθελε , where καί is to be translated “also” (Rachel weeping … was also inaccessible to consolation; on the distinction between καὶ οὐκ and οὐδέ , see Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 212 f.). The first is to be preferred as the most natural and most appropriate to the emotional style, so that ῬΑΧῊΛ ΚΛΑΊΟΥΣΑ links itself on as an apposition, and then the author “sequentium sententiarum gravitate commotus a participio ad verbum finitum deflectit,” Kühner, ad Xen. Mem. ii. 1. 30.
On the tragic designation ΟὐΚ ΕἾΝΑΙ , mortuum esse, comp. xlii. 36; Thuc. ii. 44. 2; Herod. iii. 65; Wetstein in loc.; Ellendt, Lex. Soph. I. p. 515.
[370] Where, however, the words äåà áéú ìçí are to be regarded as a gloss. See Thenius on 1Sa_10:2; Graf in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1854, p. 868.
REMARK.
The slaughter of the children at Bethlehem is closely connected with the appearance of the Magi, and was in its legendary character already extended as early as Justin (c. Tr. 78) to all the children of Bethlehem. Josephus, who makes such minute mention of the cruelty of Herod (Antt. xv. 7. 8, xvi. 11. 3, xvii. 2. 4; see Ottii Spicileg. p. 541), is silent regarding this event, which, had it been known to him as a matter of history, he would most probably have mentioned on account of its unexampled brutality. The confused narrative of Macrobius (Sat. ii. 4)[371] can here determine nothing, because it first proceeded directly or indirectly from the Christian tradition. Finally, the slaughter of the children itself appears not only as an altogether superfluous measure, since, after the surprising homage offered by the Magi, the child, recently born under extraordinary circumstances, must have been universally known in the small and certainly also provincial village of Bethlehem, or could at least have been easily and certainly discovered by the inquiries of the authorities; but also as a very unwise measure, since a summary slaughter of children could by no means give the absolute certainty which was aimed at. To understand the origin of the legend, it is not enough to point back to the typical element in the childhood of Moses, or even to the dangers undergone in childhood by Romulus, Cyrus, and so on (Strauss); but see the Remark after Mat_2:12. It is arbitrary, however, to exclude the flight of Jesus into Egypt from this cycle of legends, and to explain it historically in an altogether strange fashion, from the terrible commotion in which, after the death of Herod, Jerusalem and the surrounding localities were plunged (Ammon, L. J. I. p. 226 f.). It is indissolubly connected with the slaughter of the children, and stands or falls with it; in the preliminary history of Luke there is no place whatever for it.
[371] Ed. Bipont. p. 341 of Augustus: “Cum audisset, inter pueros, quos in Syria Herodes, rex Judaeorum, intra bimatum jussit interfici, filium quoque ejus occisum, ait: melius est Herodis porcum ( ὗν ) esse quam filium ( υἱόν ).” A confusion of the murder of Antipater (Joseph. Antt. vii. 7) with our history, as if a son of the king himself (in answer to Wieseler, Beitr. p. 154) had been among the murdered Syrian children.