Matthew 2:18

18. In Ramah Rama was a village in the tribe of Benjamin, near Bethlehem. Rachel weeping Rachel was the wife of Jacob, or Israel, and died “in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.” (See Genesis 35:19; Genesis 48:7.) When the Babylonian captivity took place, Rama was the rendezvous where the Jews were assembled to be carried away. The prophet describes this by the beautiful passage (Jeremiah 31:15-16) here quoted. Rachel, the ancestral mother of Israel, is represented as weeping over the loss of her captured and murdered children. In this the evangelist finds a typical resemblance to the martyrdom of the children by Herod.

A beautiful illustration of this personification of captured Israel as a female is found in several ancient medals, still extant, in which a mourning female figure is stamped with the pathetic inscription, Judea capta.

The typical principles are the same as in Matthew 2:15. Only there it is paternal Israel, and here it is maternal. There the father of the nation represents the nation, and here, his wife, the mother of tribes. Israel, or Judea, is here a woman. And as in the prophetic passage in Jeremiah, when fully quoted, there is a promised restoration for the hapless national Rachel, so in this case a triumph is shadowed for the maternal mourner.

They are not Equivalent to our phrase, They are no more. They are borne away into slavery. To their weeping mother they are to all intents and purposes dead.