Matthew 2:16 Then Herod, When He Saw That He Had Been Tricked by The

4. The King Tries to Thwart God’s Purpose (2:16–18)

Matthew 2:16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Herod

“Josephus recorded Herod’s execution of his two sons due to rumors of mutiny: He also sent his sons to Sebaste, a city not far from Caesarea, and ordered them to be there strangled.… And this was the end of Alexander and Aristobulus” (Whiston, The Works of Flavius Josephus, 104). Herod married 10 women and fathered 15 children by them. …. According to Josephus, Herod was so protective of his favorite wife, Mariamne, that he instructed his soldiers to kill her if anything were to happen to him while traveling abroad. Herod’s motives for marrying the young Hasmonean Jewess were partly to gain approval with the Jews. Along with her beauty, Mariamne is said to have had a temper and a constitution to speak her mind. After Herod had both of Mariamne’s parents killed, her arguments—and the wishes of his sister—caused him to have her tried and executed. After her death, Herod was terribly distraught and became ill. At another time, Herod also ordered the execution of several of his sons over suspicion that they were jockeying for his position as ruler of the kingdom. …. Herod issued two commands to be performed upon his death: 1. To execute the recently imprisoned Jewish elders so that the people would be mourning during his death. 2. To execute his son, Antipater.”1

All this is to make the point that there is no question that a man like Herod would have few scruples about killing a few children in Bethlehem. he sent and killed all the male children

“It probably did not take long to carry out Herod’s barbarous order. Bethlehem is only five miles from Jerusalem.”2 And this would explain why Joseph would have left so quickly—by night.

Notwithstanding the fact that this act was typical of Herod’s life, there is no secular account of this event. One might ask why? I think the answer is found in the number of babies murdered.

1 Melton B. Winstead. (2012). Herod the Great. In J. D. Barry & L. Wentz (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary (J. D. Barry & L. Wentz, Ed.). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software. 2 Carson, D. A. (1984). Matthew. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, p. 94). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House. “… Professor William F. Albright, the dean of American archaeology in the Holy Land, estimates that the population of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth to be about 300 people (Albright and Mann 1971:19). The number of male children, two years old or younger, would be about six or seven….”3

This many deaths by one known to murder so many and in an insignificant out of the way village would not get headlines. who were two years old or under

“The two-years age limit was to prevent Jesus’ escape; at the time he was between six and twenty months old.”4 The mention of “two years” in this verse is the strongest reason to suggest that it took the magi over a year to reach Bethlehem instead of 30 or 40 days.

Returning to our Herod/Pharaoh comparison with a recapitulated Exodus “not only was Moses’ father Amram informed in a dream of his son’s future role (Josephus, Ant. 2.210–216…), but Pharaoh too, who according to the Exodus account was simply aiming at a genocidal reduction of the Israelite population, was also according to Josephus (Ant. 2.205,209) specifically warned of the birth of one child who was destined to humble Egypt and exalt Israel, as a result of which both Pharaoh and the Egyptians were alarmed (Ant. 2.206,215; cf Matt 2:3) and decided on the policy of infanticide. The warning was delivered, according to Josephus, by an Egyptian “sacred scribe” … but other sources attribute it more specifically to “astrologers” … which would correspond to Matthew’s magoi.”5

Matthew 2:17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: fulfilled

See Matthew 1:22

So the words “increased understanding”, “filling up”, “completely filled up”, “fills up with additional meaning” and “bring to full significance” appear to flesh out the idea as to what this word means.

Matthew 2:18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

As stated in verse 17, the quote comes from Jeremiah.

3 http://www.ldolphin.org/innocents.html 4 Carson, D. A. (1984). Matthew. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, p. 94). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House. 5 France, R. T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew (p. 63). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publication Co. “Thus says the LORD: “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 no more.”” (Jeremiah 31:15, ESV)

Ramah

Ramah was 5 or 6 miles north of Jerusalem, Bethlehem was 5 or 6 miles south of Jerusalem. How does one apply to the other?

Let’s look at some background on Rachel.

Rachel, while traveling south from Bethel on the way to Bethlehem, dies and is buried in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah near Bethlehem.

Then they journeyed from Bethel. When they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor.” (Genesis 35:16, ESV)

“So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem),” (Genesis 35:19, ESV)

“… you will meet two men by Rachel’s tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah, ….” (1 Samuel 10:2, ESV)

There are four cities in this story. Traveling from Bethel they pass by Ramah, Rachel dies and is buried in Zelzah as they approach Bethlehem.

Rachel dies delivering a son she calls Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow”. Judah renames him Benjamin or “son of my right hand”.

Rachel’s name for the boy is the first association with sorrow in our story and it is in association with her death at Zelzah, not her son’s death. The baby does not die, she dies, so her sorry is not for her baby unlike our story in Matthew, so that does not seem to be relevant to our story. And next we need to ask, how does Ramah become a part of the story?

So far all this is but background to our Matthew story. The next stage of the story begins with the prophets.

Hosea prophecies desolation and punishment for Israel’s sins and this will take place at Ramah.

“Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; we follow you, O Benjamin!” (Hosea 5:8, ESV)

Benjamin, Rachel’s son does not appear to appear directly in our story although the tribe of Benjamin does.

Jeremiah continues where Hosea leaves off and describes the actual judgment.

“Thus says the LORD: “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 no more.”” (Jeremiah 31:15, ESV)

Here we are specifically told that Rachel is weeping for her children, that is, children of Benjamin and it is Jeremiah that makes this association, not Matthew. Matthew simply sees the correspondence between Rachel and the events occurring in Ramah. Matthew develops this correspondence even further.

“The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD after Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah, when he took him bound in chains along with all the captives of Jerusalem and Judah who were being exiled to Babylon.” (Jeremiah 40:1, ESV)

We see from this verse that Ramah was a gathering place for the captives for their trip to Babylon, as a result, there is much weeping here.

The passage Matthew mentions comes from Jeremiah.

How does it all fit together?

“Almost all of Jer. 31 describes the future days of God’s new covenant with his people, when he will restore them to their land, forgive their sins, and bless them with peace and prosperity. Verses 1–14 and 16–20 enunciate all of these themes. Verses 21–22 call Israel to return to their land and faith on the basis of God’s promises that Jeremiah has just announced. Verses 23–30 again employ the form of future predictions, leading to the passage that explicitly anticipates a “new covenant” (31:31–35), a passage quoted at length in Heb. 8:8–12 as having been fulfilled in Jesus (cf. also Heb. 10:16–17).

Tucked into these wonderful promises is Jer. 31:15, the lone verse in this chapter that reflects the current grief surrounding the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. Jewish mothers have watched their sons go off to battle, some to die and others to be carried away captive to distant lands. Still more were forcibly evicted from Israel to ensure that the nation would not pose a military threat in the future. Ramah was six miles north of Jerusalem; departing captives from Judah’s capital had to go through it on the road to the lands of the northern invaders (Jer. 40:1). ”6

The key here is to note that “it was specifically at Ramah that the exiles were gathered for the march to Babylon in 586 B.C. (Jer 40:1). It was here that the symbol of Rachel weeping for her children takes form. It is not the geographic location that is significant, it is the symbol of grief and death that is in the Rachel story. And, importantly, this is tied to the fact that Rachel was one of the mothers of Israel—the mother of Benjamin, symbolic of all the children of Israel.

Rachel weeping for her children

So, what does this Old Testament passage about Rachel and Ramah have to do with Jesus and Bethlehem?

Matthew sees another meaning in the Jeremiah passage and in Matthew 2:18 see a fuller understanding as to what this grief embraces. It is not that Matthew 2:18 is a fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15. “The text in Jeremiah is not a prediction, nor does it even use the future tense.”7 It is a story of the loss and grief of Rachel, an archetype of an Israeli mother, having lost her children in war and by enslavement to Babylon. Her children are gone; she will never see them again. It is this emotion that Matthew here captures in the death of these boys in Bethlehem.

Under the authority of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 2 makes 1) the association of Jeremiah’s Ramah with its great sorrow over the loss of the sons of Rachel to captivity 2) with

6 Beale, G. K., & Carson, D. A. (2007). Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament (8–9). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, UK: Baker Academic; Apollos. 7 Beale, G. K., & Carson, D. A. (2007). Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament (10). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, UK: Baker Academic; Apollos. Jesus’ Bethlehem and with the great sorrow over the loss of the sons of Rachel in their murder by Herod. The story is told in type (Ramah) and antitype (Bethlehem) but the association with Rachel is not close—she did not lose any children, she does not go to Ramah. The story simply identifies Rachel as a mother in Israel that has lost children— in the Book of Jeremiah in Ramah, in the Book of Matthew in Bethlehem. weeping and loud lamentation

As seen earlier, there is another incident that comes to mind in the destruction of children. “The massacre of the infants calls to mind Pharaoh’s orders to the Hebrew midwives to kill all the baby boys they delivered (Exod. 1:15–16, 22).”8

“Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”” (Exodus 1:15–16, ESV)

“Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”” (Exodus 1:22, ESV)

“Again, in Matthew’s perspective, Jesus is understood as summarizing the whole experience of Israel as well as bringing it to fulfillment. Every strand of hope and trial in the OT is woven together in the eschatological appearance of the Promised One.”9 Moses is the type, Jesus is the antitype. As Moses escaped the efforts of Pharaoh in Egypt to murder him, so Jesus escapes the efforts of the new Pharaoh in the new Egypt—Jerusalem, Herod, to murder him.

8 Beale, G. K., & Carson, D. A. (2007). Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament (8). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, UK: Baker Academic; Apollos. 9 Hagner, D. A. (1998). Matthew 1–13 (Vol. 33A, p. 38). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.