MATTHEW, THE WAILING OF THE MOTHERS

Hugh Fogelman

In the passage from Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15, crying is heard in Ramah, and Rachel is mourning her lost children. But in the very next verse (verse 16), God is telling Rachel to stop crying and start rejoicing; her children are not dead, but are coming home out of captivity. Instead of being a passage of lamentation, this is one of rejoicing. As usual the Christian New Testament (Matthew 2:17-18) takes this verse and twists it into an opposite meaning, and then tries to relate it to Jesus. What Matthew did is as cynical as it is dishonest.

The author of the book of Matthew tries to prove that Jesus was the messiah prophesied. In his effort to reconstruct the life story of Jesus, Matthew scoured the scriptures (Hebrew Bible) for any verses that might be construed as prophecies about the coming savior of the Hebrews. Since any true messiah would have to fulfill these prophecies, Matthew made sure that his Jesus story included prophecy-fulfillment fourteen times in his gospel. Most of those times, he misquoted, took verses out of context, misinterpreted or simply made them up.

For example, the author of "Matthew" claims that the wailing of the mothers of the children murdered by King Herod was foreshadowed hundreds of years earlier in events described in the book of Jeremiah. The Jeremiah story had nothing whatever to do with an evil king and murdered children, and that Matthew was mistaken. Reading the entire Rachel Passage in Jeremiah, clearly shows that it is about Hope and Joy.

Jeremiah speaks of the Jews who had been scattered abroad during the Diaspora (exile), figuratively referring to the land of Israel as Rachel weeping in the town of Ramah for her children. But, the Lord tells Rachel to dry her tears and rejoice at his promise that Israel's children would soon be coming home out of captivity. This is what the LORD says: Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded, declares the LORD. They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your future, declares the LORD. Your children will return to their own land." (Jeremiah 31:17)

Matthew distorts the meaning of Jeremiah verse, and takes it out of context. In telling the story about King Herod ordering the murder of all the young children of Bethlehem, he took special notice to create grieving mothers of the murdered children, an event that he apparently claimed was foretold in the book of Jeremiah. Matthew wrote: "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem... King Herod...asked where the Christ was to be born and gave orders to kill all the children in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under...”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." Matthew 2:17-18

According to Matthew, the wailing of the Bethlehem mothers was somehow related or foretold by Rachel's wails in Ramah. However, even a schoolchild, after reading Jeremiah, knows that Jeremiah is not speaking of dead children and grieving mothers 6 centuries in the future, but of the joy over the eventual return of exiled children who are much alive.
Thus, there is not the slightest meaningful connection between the events described in Jeremiah and the story of Herod's slaughter reported by Matthew. In Matthew's story of Herod's murders, the children are dead and are never to return; in Jeremiah's story, the children are alive and returning to their homeland. In no way does the Jeremiah passage have anything to do with a king's murder of children, or any other event in the life of a savior in the first century. Furthermore, if Matthew is right, then the mothers' lamentations and cries of grief were so loud that they could be heard in the village of Ramah, twenty miles from the scene of the crime in Bethlehem. If such sounds were heard there, then surely they also were heard in Jerusalem, which lay between Bethlehem and Ramah. Was this reported in history? NO! This is not the first time Matthew was wrong and made up stories.

Matthew's story is just one more example of a misguided effort to mold Jesus to Hebrew Bible passages, even if the pieces don't fit. Matthew just keeps pounding his square peg, trying to get it to fit the round hole. This failed attempt, just one of many, to grow a messiah out of non-existent prophecy fulfillment based on a non-existent prophecy is reason enough to question not only all of Matthew, but the intelligence of the committee of elder infallible churchmen who decided to include his writings in their bible.

Christian apologists wishing to explain away the apparent inconsistencies between the Ramah verses in Jeremiah and Matthew will need to address the following points:

1. The alleged Herod murders occurred in Bethlehem, not twenty miles away in Ramah.

2. Jeremiah spoke of scattered Israelis of the Diaspora (exile), not murdered babies.

3. Rachel was weeping for her lost children of Israel, not her murdered children.

4. Matthew says Jeremiah foretold the grief of the mothers of Herod's murder victims.

5. Only Matthew wrote about or referenced the Herod murders (24 words only).

6. There is no extra-canonical account of these murders. Why?

But then, unlearned Christians do not want to know the truth about their gospel writers. Their “blind faith” pushed by their preachers tell them that all these great men were “inspired by God” even though the New Testament does not say that.

And, based upon Matthew's quotation from Jeremiah, the wailing of the mothers of the dead babies was loud enough to be heard in Ramah, which was on the other side of Jerusalem, the capital and largest city of Judah. Thus the inhabitants of Jerusalem, including its scribes who still maintained that great historical and literary tradition, would have heard this and would have recorded it. But there is no corroboration from any other source of Matthew's claim of mass infanticide. This problem with the infanticide story, other than there is no historical record of this, not even from other New Testament writers, just makes no sense. What could Matthew's purpose have been in telling this awful story of killing babies? Was he that desperate to find anything in the Hebrew Bible that might hint at giving his Jesus creditability, that he had to resort making up stories?

Do the references to these passages establish that scriptural prophecy (prediction) has been fulfilled? Are the two quoted passages from the Hebrew Bible necessary in some way to establish the truth of Christianity?

Doesn’t exposing Matthew’s lie simply show the world the lies in Christianity? YES!

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