438 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSRachel is weeping over her sons; she refuses to be comforted over her sons. He-
brew baneyha in this case is better translated "her sons" than "her children,"
because Jeremiah has in mind Rachel's sons Joseph and Benjamin and the
tribes named after them. The LXX has a shorter text: Rachel apoklaiomene ouk
ethelen pausasthai epi tois hyiois autes ("Rachel could not stop weeping over
her sons"), which appears to omit only the first "over her sons." This omission
could be due to its aversion to repetition (although this is not a second occur-
rence); more likely it is another loss due to haplography (homoeoteleuton:
h ... h). The repetition, in any case, is doubtless intentional and should be re-
tained (Volz; Rudolph; cf. Rhetoric and Composition). On the language of
grief and mourning in Jeremiah, see Muilenburg 1970b: 55-59.
she refuses to be comforted over her sons. The N-stem of nf:tm, elsewhere "to
be sorry, repent," here means "to be comforted, consoled" (Parunak 1975: 520).
The portrayal is of a woman who cannot be comforted, where Rachel is doing
precisely what Jacob did upon hearing the news that Joseph was dead (Gen
37:35: "but he refused to be comforted;' wayema>en lehitnaf:tem).
because they are not. Hebrew >enennu is a distributive singular: "he ( = each
one of the sons) is not" (GKC § l 45m). The Versions have a plural. Sons car-
ried off into exile (so T; cf. Lam 1:5) are as good as dead. Rachel is grieving
over all her children, none of whom remains (cf. Isa 49:15).MESSAGE AND AUDIENCE
A Judahite audience is told here that Rachel's weeping voice has been heard at
Ramah. It may already know this due to popular belief. Like Jacob after hear-
ing that his favored son was not, and he could not be comforted, now Rachel
too refuses to be comforted because her sons are not. This oracle may have
been spoken originally to Northern Israel, and with it the comfort oracles that
follow. Needless to say, it would also have had a profound impact on exile-
bound Judahites in 597 and 586 B.C., particularly the latter as they sat en-
chained at the Ramah holding camp (40:1-4). For all Judahites, those exiled
and those remaining in the land, the companion oracles in vv 16-17 give a
divine response of comfort and hope.
Matthew applies this oracle to Herod's massacre of the infants in Bethlehem
(Matt 2:17-18). More recently, this passage has had a profound impact on Jew-
ish survivors of the Holocaust. Emil Fackenheim tells of a Polish guard who
testified at the Nuremberg trials and said that women carrying their children
were sent with them to the crematorium at Auschwitz. The children were then
snatched from them and sent to the gas chambers separately. When the po-
grom was at its height, children would be thrown alive into the furnaces, with
their screams being heard in the camp. The report from Ravensbrueck was no
less chilling. Fackenheim says,
In 1942, the medical services of the Revier were required to perform abor-
tions on all pregnant women. If a child happened to be born alive, it would