Jeremiah;- Rachel weeps (ch31)

“A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not” (Jeremiah ch31 v15).

These words continue the prophecy of comfort to the former northern kingdom, which began in v2. The northern kingdom regarded itself as the true Israel, but a familiar label is “Ephraim”, the name of the main tribe.

Jeremiah is referring to the recent destruction of the kingdom of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians.
Rachel weeps because she was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, the ancestors of the main population of the northern kingdom. Her children are “lost”, in the sense that they have been taken into exile. The weeping is supposed to be heard from the region of Ramah, presumably because it was coming from her tomb.

There are variant traditions about the place where Rachel was buried. The occasion of her death was the birth of Benjamin, so it makes sense that her tomb should have been near Ramah, in Benjamin’s territory (Genesis ch35 vv16-21.) The story of Saul places her tomb in Zelzah, which may be a location close to the better-known Ramah (1 Samuel ch10 v2) The Genesis account adds that she was buried “on the way to Bethlehem”, and later traditions have moved the tomb closer to Bethlehem itself.

The Lord responds to Rachel’s grief in this way;
“Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, says the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country” (vv16-17).

I remember an old Peanuts Christmas cartoon, in which Charles Schulz quoted these verses with an obvious topical reference to the prisoners of war in Hanoi.

A sample of the moaning of the tribe of Ephraim follows in vv18-19, speaking as one person. “I” have been chastened “like an untrained calf”, which gets beaten by the drover to keep it out of the wrong paths. There is an appeal; “Bring me back that I may be restored, for thou art the Lord my God”. This is an expression of repentance. He admits as much in v19. “After I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed and I was confounded, because I bore the disgrace of my youth.”

Of course the Lord responds to repentance with mercy; “Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart years for him. I will surely have mercy on him” (v20)

This mercy is exactly what was promised at the end of Hosea, at the height of Ephraim’s sin; “I will heal their faithlessness; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them” (Hosea ch14 v4).

Therefore the Lord points out the way for them to the land; “Set up waymarks for yourself, make yourself guideposts… Return O virgin Israel, return to these your cities” (v21).

He asks why his wayward daughter is still wavering, and then adds a very puzzling verse. We are told that the Lord has created a new thing on the earth (v22). But what is it?

“A woman shall compass a man” (AV)
“A woman shall encompass a man” (The interlinear Bible on the Biblehub site)
“A woman protects a man” (RSV)
“A woman sets out to find her husband again” (New Jerusalem)
“A woman will surround a man” (NIV, which also offers “Or will go about seeking, or will protect” in the footnotes).

This is evidently a translation issue. As far as I can tell from my lexicon, the basic idea of the Hebrew root is “going round something”. It seems a bit of a stretch to turn that into “travelling towards”, even though that idea follows on most easily from the invitation to return found in the previous verses.

The most obvious way for a woman to “encompass” a male is by holding him in her womb. But this is hardly a “new thing”, unless we regard it as an unexpected prophecy about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, to which event Matthew applies the verse at the top of the page. Or at least it could be a cryptic allusion to the “birth” prophecy in the earlier prophet Micah; “But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, who are little among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth one who is to be ruler in Israel” (Micah ch5 v2). This follows on from the “going into exile” theme in Micah ch4.

I got that far on my own resources, and then tried the emergency resource of checking what copies of the old International Critical Commentary were on archive.org. Unfortunately, it seems that the old ICC never got as far as Jeremiah. I could only find a book by George Adam Smith, who puts the verse in square brackets and adds a footnote “This couplet has been a trial to commentaries”, but “we are relieved of it” by the fact that it contains a couple of words later than Jeremiah’s usage. So the allusion to Micah is the best suggestion I can offer.

From v25 the chapter moves back into prose and there is a new prophecy which includes the house of Judah. But this fresh prophecy is interrupted in vv35-37 by additional poetry which may as well be regarded as the conclusion of the “Israel” prophecy.

“Thus says the Lord”, who gives a fixed order for the sun and the moon, the stars and the sea;
“If this fixed order departs from before me, the shall the descendants of Israel cease from being a nation before me for ever”. That is, it won’t happen.
“If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the descendants of Israel”

V15 has acquired Christmas overtones, because Matthew quotes these words as part of the story about Herod’s reaction to the birth of Jesus; “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under” (Matthew ch2 v16). I used to present a thread each Christmas based on one of Matthew’s Nativity quotations, and v15 was the choice for 2015. It took very little juggling to get the passage to coincide with Christmas again this time round.

Strictly speaking, of course, Matthew’s reference is inaccurate, because the children around Bethlehem were not children of Rachel. The tribe of Judah were the children of Leah (Genesis ch29 v35). The last chapters of Genesis do give the impression that Rachel was the mother of all twelve sons, but that’s just Josephite propaganda.

I go offline every year on Christmas Eve, because my work table reverts to being a dining table.

So I'll take this opportunity now to wish everyone a happy Christmas. See you in the new year.