Jeremiah 31:15

The Lord described the Israelite mothers-using the figure of Rachel-weeping for their children who had died because of the Assyrian invasion. [Note: The figure appears again in Matthew 2:17-18 where Rachel, the symbolic mother of all Israelites, weeps for the children that Herod the Great slew. See Dyer, "Jeremiah," p. 1170, for a brief discussion of Matthew’s use of this figure.] Rachel-being the mother of Joseph (the father of Ephraim and Manasseh), and Benjamin-represented all the Israelites, from the north and the south. Ramah was a town about five miles north of Jerusalem that stood in Benjamin’s tribal territory near the border between Israel and Judah. The exiles stopped at Ramah, and undoubtedly wept there, on their way to exile in Babylon (Jeremiah 40:1). Rachel’s tomb was near Bethlehem (Genesis 35:16; Genesis 35:19), south of Jerusalem.

"Rachel’s life story sets her apart from the other Israelite ancestors. She alone had only a grave and never a home in the promised land (Jeremiah 30:3). She died ’on the way’ (Genesis 35:19), and her last words express her sorrow (Genesis 35:18). Not every mother will give up her own life for her child’s (e.g., Jeremiah 19:9; Lamentations 2:20; Lamentations 4:10; 2 Kings 6:28-29). Rachel’s death in childbirth makes her deeply credible as an example of the profound extent of a mother’s love. Rachel is a mother who does not forget her children (cf. Isaiah 49:15)." [Note: Scalise, p. 119.]

"The destruction of the people of Israel by the Assyrians and Chaldeans is a type of the massacre of the infants at Bethlehem, in so far as the sin which brought the children of Israel into exile laid a foundation for the fact that Herod the Idumean became king over the Jews, and wished to destroy the true King and Saviour of Israel that he might strengthen his own dominion." [Note: Keil, 2:26. Cf. Matthew 2:18.]