{"id":6268,"date":"2015-01-24T00:05:50","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T08:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=6268"},"modified":"2015-01-23T14:00:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T22:00:55","slug":"ramah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/01\/24\/ramah\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramah"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is what the LORD says:
\n\u201cA cry is heard in Ramah\u2014
\ndeep anguish and bitter weeping.
\nRachel weeps for her children,
\nrefusing to be comforted\u2014
\nfor her children are gone.\u201d
\nBut now this is what the LORD says:
\n\u201cDo not weep any longer,
\nfor I will reward you,\u201d says the LORD.
\n\u201cYour children will come back to you
\nfrom the distant land of the enemy.
\nThere is hope for your future,\u201d says the LORD.
\n\u201cYour children will come again to their own land.
\nI have heard Israel saying,
\n\u2018You disciplined me severely,
\nlike a calf that needs training for the yoke.
\nTurn me again to you and restore me,
\nfor you alone are the LORD my God.
\nI turned away from God,
\nbut then I was sorry.
\nI kicked myself for my stupidity!
\nI was thoroughly ashamed of all I did in my younger days.\u2019 (Jeremiah 31:15-19)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome, once made a wry comment about Herod the Great, the man he had made into the king of Judea. He said, \u201cit is better to be Herod\u2019s pigs than Herod\u2019s sons.\u201d Pigs were not kosher, so he wouldn\u2019t touch them. But Herod\u2019s family? He was paranoid and killed more than one of his offspring and an inconvenient wife whom he had feared might be plotting against him. When wise men from Persia showed up looking for a royal son that had supposedly been born to him, Herod was panic stricken. None of his wives had recently given birth. And he was a king in Judea only because Augustus Caesar had made him king. He was not descended from David and had no legitimacy. If a new king had been born as these wise men suggested, that was very bad news for Herod indeed: he had a rival, someone who had a legitimate right to the throne he was occupying. So he found out where the child was to be born, according to the prophets, and when the wise men didn\u2019t come back, he just took care of things in his own inimitable style: he simply slaughtered all the babies in Bethlehem who might be even close to the right age. No sense in being too careful.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s prophesy of Rachel weeping because her children were no more was taken by Matthew and applied to Herod\u2019s slaughter. But Jeremiah\u2019s original intent was to prophesy about the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. \u201cRachel\u201d of course, was Jacob\u2019s\u2014Israel\u2019s\u2014true love, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. Metaphorically, she came to stand in as a poetic reference to the nation of Israel. Unlike the infants slaughtered by Herod, God reassured the Rachel of Jeremiah\u2019s day, the people of Israel, that those taken from them would one day return again. And even for those slaughtered by Herod, the resurrection is coming. Those lost to us now, will be with us forever someday. The most bitter of tears will be wiped away.<\/p>\n

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This is what the LORD says: \u201cA cry is heard in Ramah\u2014 deep anguish and bitter weeping. Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted\u2014 for her children are gone.\u201d But now this is what the LORD says: \u201cDo … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6268"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6270,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6268\/revisions\/6270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}