Matthew 2:18

¹⁵The LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”

¹⁷The LORD of Armies says, “Consider, and call for the mourning women, that they may come. Send for the skillful women, that they may come. ¹⁸Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids gush out with waters. ¹⁹For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, ‘How we are ruined! We are greatly confounded because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.’” ²⁰Yet hear the LORD’s word, you women. Let your ear receive the word of his mouth. Teach your daughters wailing. Everyone teach her neighbor a lamentation. ²¹For death has come up into our windows. It has entered into our palaces to cut off the children from outside, and the young men from the streets.

³¹For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who gives birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, saying, “Woe is me now! For my soul faints before the murderers.”

¹⁶They traveled from Bethel. There was still some distance to come to Ephrath, and Rachel travailed. She had hard labor. ¹⁷When she was in hard labor, the midwife said to her, “Don’t be afraid, for now you will have another son.”

¹⁸As her soul was departing (for she died), she named him Benoni,^[+] but his father named him Benjamin.^19[+] Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath (also called Bethlehem). ²⁰Jacob set up a pillar on her grave. The same is the Pillar of Rachel’s grave to this day.

¹⁰He spread it before me. It was written within and without; and lamentations, mourning, and woe were written in it.

³⁰He returned to his brothers, and said, “The child is no more; and I, where will I go?”

³⁶Jacob, their father, said to them, “You have bereaved me of my children! Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me.”

¹⁰But man dies, and is laid low. Yes, man gives up the spirit, and where is he?

³³He recognized it, and said, “It is my son’s tunic. An evil animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces.” ³⁴Jacob tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days. ³⁵All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, “For I will go down to Sheol^[+] to my son, mourning.” His father wept for him.

¹³I saw, and I heard an eagle,^[+] flying in mid heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe! Woe! Woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the other blasts of the trumpets of the three angels, who are yet to sound!”