Matthew 2:13-18
"When they (The Magi) had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet Hosea: “Out of Egypt I called my son"(Hosea 11:1).
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. (Matthew 2:16) Then, what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “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” (Jeremiah 31:15).
Matthew here narrates God's protection for Jesus (2:13-15) and Herod's brutal massacre of other children (2:16-18). Although the narrative rings with inspired grief and rage against Herod's act, God does not stop the injustice in this, any more than what we hear played on the evening news. Yet, this narrative contains a kernel of good news that human reporters often cannot adequately discern until after the fact: the injustice of a world run by rebels against God, cannot thwart His ultimate purposes for justice in that world.
In Matthew's account, he chooses an ancient lament from one of the most sorrowful times of his people's history, Jeremiah 31:15. This passage speaks of Rachel weeping for her children, poetically describing the favored mother of Benjamin (standing for all Judah) mourning because her descendants were led into exile. Jeremiah 31 also implies future hope. Rachel weeps for her children, but God comforts her, promising the restoration of his people (Jer 31:15-17), because Israel is "my dear son, the child in whom I delight" (Jer 31:20; compare Mt 2:15; 3:17).
Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, was buried in the neighborhood of Bethlehem (Ge 35:19), where her sepulchre is still shown. She is figuratively represented as rising from the tomb and uttering a double lament for the loss of her children—first, by a bitter captivity, and now by a bloody death.
"O ye mothers of Bethlehem! methinks I hear you asking why your innocent babes should be the ram caught in the thicket, while Isaac escapes. I cannot tell you, but one thing I know, that ye shall, some of you, live to see a day when that Babe of Bethlehem shall be Himself the Ram, caught in another sort of thicket, in order that your babes may escape a worse doom than they now endure. And if these babes of yours be now in glory, through the dear might of that blessed Babe, will they not deem it their honor that the tyrant’s rage was exhausted upon themselves instead of their infant Lord?"
This shows that God called his son Jesus to identify with the suffering and exile of his people (as in 1:12, 17; compare Jer 43:5-7), this identification speaks of a God who feels our human pain as deeply as we do. While philosophers and theologians must address the problem of evil intellectually, many grieving people inside and outside our churches face it existentially. To broken people wounded by this world's evil, Jesus' sharing our pain offers a consolation deeper than reasoned arguments: God truly understands and cares-and paid an awful price to begin to make things better.
The Truth
"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)
Merry Christmas
