Bible Strands
Matthew 2:18
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Matthew's narrator, addressing his readers, inserts this as a fulfillment citation immediately after Herod's massacre of the infants in Bethlehem (2:16) and before the angel's instruction to Joseph in Egypt (2:19).
The words — θρῆνος (thrēnos) means a formal, public lamentation, a structured mourning cry distinct from the rawer κλαυθμός (klauthmos) that follows it in the same verse.
The thread — The direct source is Jeremiah 31:15; the broader motif of summoned wailing women and labor-cry imagery runs through Jeremiah 9:17 and 4:31.
Why it lands — It asks the reader to hold a massacre and a fulfillment prediction in the same breath: the worst thing that happens is also the thing that was foretold, and Matthew offers no resolution between those two facts.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 31:15 This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
- Jeremiah 9:17 This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Take note, and summon the wailing women; send for the most skillful among them.
- Jeremiah 4:31 For I hear a cry like a woman in labor, a cry of anguish like one bearing her first child—the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands to say, “Woe is me, for my soul faints before the murderers!”
- Genesis 35:16 Later, they set out from Bethel, and while they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth, and her labor was difficult.
- Ezekiel 2:10 which He unrolled before me. And written on the front and back of it were words of lamentation, mourning, and woe.
- Genesis 37:30 returned to his brothers, and said, “The boy is gone! What am I going to do?”
- Genesis 37:33 His father recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! A vicious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces!”
- Genesis 42:36 Their father Jacob said to them, “You have deprived me of my sons. Joseph is gone and Simeon is no more. Now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is going against me!”
- Job 14:10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he?
- Revelation 8:13 And as I observed, I heard an eagle flying overhead, calling in a loud voice, “Woe! Woe! Woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the remaining three angels!”