St Matthew Ii. 18. 133

— (1.) Shrill grief indefinitely: her who mourns, and those whom she mourns, (2.) refusing the consolation offered to her; and the cause why she refused it. — The thirty-first chapter of Jere miah is prospective to a great degree of the times of the New Tes tament ; and so does this passage refer to this event in the New Testament history, whether Jeremiah regarded at the same time the Babylonian Captivity or not ; a greater and less event of distinct periods may correspond with the single meaning of a single prediction, until the prophecy is exhausted. — 'Pa^X, Rachel) put antonomatically for the individual daughters of Rachel and other mothers, who thus had sons of pangs [Benoni]. — Cf. Gen. xxxv. 18. The sons of Rachel are named : the sons of other mothers are understood at the same time, as in 1 Cor. x. 1, the Gentiles are also included under the fathers of the Jews. The infants of Bethlehem might also be called " sons of Rachel," on account of the tomb of Rachel mentioned in Gen. xxxv. 19, as being near that town : just as the Samaritans (John iv. 12) called Jacob their father, because they lived in the same place where he had formerly dwelt. But Rama did also belong to the tribe of Benjamin (see Josh, xviii. 25), who was the son of Rachel. It is quite conceivable that the assassins despatched so suddenly by Herod to Bethlehem, may have proceeded even as far as Rama, as the towns were very near together : see Judg. xix. 2, 9, 13 ; Ezra ii. 21, 26 : from which circumstance Jere miah, a priest from the land of Benjamin, pointed it out as the limit of the massacre. — xXaiovffa, weeping) i.e., xXahi, weeps, a Hebraism. — ovx %de\e -rafaxX^Jjca/, refused to receive consolation) A phrase which expresses intense grief. — ovx efof, they are not) Thus, in the S. V. of Gen. xlii. 36, we read'lw<r?}p o-jx sgn, ZU/AIUV oux tan, Joseph is not, Simeon is not) ; and in 1 Kings xx. 40, olro$ ovx fa, he was not) in the Hebrew 133>X, he is not, in the singular number used distributively. The mothers mourn each especially their own, or even their only sons ; for even only chil dren would, in this case, be expressed in the plural number : the slaughtered infants were of two years old, or a little under, so that a single mother could not easily be deprived of more than one. The event was accurately foretold. Others refer the singular number to the Messiah, whom they suppose the women to have imagined slain, or mourned as banished.