Matthew 2:16

Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wisemen, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the male children ... Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, ... Rachel weeping for her children; And she would not be comforted, because they are not.

Exceeding wroth ... indicates the utmost fury of that inhuman king. Some have professed to marvel that Josephus omits any reference to Herod's slaughter of the innocents; but such is easily understood when it is recalled that Bethlehem was a small place and that the list of the slain was possibly not very large, especially when compared with the long lists of the slain so characteristic of Herod's reign. The slaughter of a few babies in Bethlehem would create little stir in a society like that. Yet there is historical reference to the event. A fourth century historian, Macrobius, referred to the slaughter of those children and affirmed that Herod's own son was among the slain, hence a proverb that arose, "It is better to be Herod's hog than his son."[10">Matthew 2:16.">[10] As a Jewish proselyte, Herod refrained from killing swine or having anything to do with them or their flesh.

Two years old and under ... This period is hard to place. Do they refer to children two years older, or younger than Christ; or do they apply to those both younger and older, embracing a period of one year before to one year after our Lord's birth? The latter case would have indicated that Herod used a margin of allowance on both sides of our Lord's age. It is the difficulty of determining just what this period is that makes it almost impossible to locate with positive accuracy the exact year of the Saviour's birth.

Rachel weeping for her children ... The tomb of Rachel was located at Ramah; and many of the captives led away to Babylon passed her tomb on the way to captivity. Jeremiah represented Rachel as weeping for the children of the captivity (Jeremiah 31:15). Here Matthew applies the words as a prophecy of the grief and tears arising upon the slaughter of the innocents at the birth of Christ. Thus, there is another example of prophecy having an immediate and a remote fulfillment (Matthew 2:15).