fairly clear that the town is being referred to. Another difficulty is that Bethlehem is in Judah, and thus its people were regarded as the children of Leah not Rachel. The verse is also taken somewhat out of context. The passage in Jeremiah is actually one of joy ending with the information that God had saved the Israelites and the children would be unharmed. This is not true of the children of Bethlehem who find no last minute succor. However, in the Catholic and Orthodox churches the Holy Innocents were proclaimed to all be saints, thus meeting Jeremiah's message of deliverance. The most likely explanation however, is that Rachel represents her descendants more importantly the women of whom lost their children. The voice heard in Rama was that of the lamentation and weeping and great morning taking place in Bethlehem. The outcry was so great that it was heard from over 5 miles away. The most pertinent problem however is the fact that Jeremiah continues his narration in the consecutive verses Jeremiah 31:16-17, where the Lord says that the children will return from the enemy to their own land Commentary from the Church Fathers Chrysostom: The Evangelist by this history of so bloody a massacre, having filled the reader with horror, now again soothes his feelings, showing that these things were not done because God could not hinder, or knew not of them; but as the Prophet had foretold. Jerome: (In Hierem. 31:15.) This passage of Jeremiah has been quoted by Matthew neither according to the Hebrew nor the LXX (Septuagint) version. This shows that the Evangelists and Apostles did not follow any one's translation, but according to the Hebrew manner expressed in their own words what they had read in Hebrew. Jerome: By Ramah we need not suppose that the town of that name near Gibeah is meant; but take it as signifying ‘high.’ A voice was heard ‘aloft,’ that is, spread far and wide.’ Pseudo-Chrysostom: Or, it was heard on high, because uttered for the death of the innocent, according to that, The voice of the poor entereth into the heavens. (Ecclus. 35:21.) The ‘weeping’ means the cries of the children; ‘lamentation,’ refers to the mothers. In the infants themselves their death ends their cries, in the mothers it is continually renewed by the remembrance of their loss. Jerome: Rachel's son was Benjamin, in which tribe Bethlehem is