Matthew 2: Mourning prophecy fulfilled

15 This is what the LORD says: "A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more." Jeremiah 3

Matthew quotes and says that this prophecy was fulfilled

"2:16 When Herod ²⁶  saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he became enraged. He sent men ²⁷  to kill all the children in Bethlehem ²⁸  and throughout the surrounding region from the age of two and under, according to the time he had learned from the wise men. 2:17 Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:"

Skeptic's annotated Bible :
(2:17) "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet" Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15, claiming that it was a prophecy of King Herod's alleged slaughter of the children in and around Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus. But this verse refers to the Babylonian captivity, as is clear by reading the next two verses (16 and 17), and, thus, has nothing to do with Herod's massacre. 

ANSWER :

This prophecy was given by God himself to Jeremiah in a dream. It comes in the middle of a passage which declares the plan of God to bless his people.   

The prophecy as quoted by Jeremiah is what the Lord told him. In what sense it applies is made clear in Matthew 2 . The Lord saw the event about to happen in future and says these words next to the passage where he talks about restoration and blessing . 

   This is about what would happen later , after the birth of the blessed one , the blessing to the world , there was mourning there and this mourning was forseen by God. 

 The next verse starts another message from Lord ,which again starts ,

15 This is what the LORD says: "A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more." 16 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. 17 So there is hope for your future," declares the LORD. "Your children will return to their own land.

  

Rachel represents the mother of Israel . It is a figurative way of prophesying about a loss for Israel and the mourning of Israel's mother for her children. The same is applied by matthew when the massacre and the consequent mourning and weeping takes place.This prophecy was fulfilled in the wake of this incident. 

 

This is how the commentators deal with this passage 

"Rachel, who all her life had pined for children ( Genesis 30:1 ), and who died with "sorrow" in giving birth to Benjamin ( Genesis 35:18 Genesis 35:19 , Margin; 1 Samuel 10:2 ), and was buried at Ramah, near Beth-lehem, is represented as raising her head from the tomb, and as breaking forth into "weeping" at seeing the whole land depopulated of her sons, the Ephraimites. Ramah was the place where Nebuzara-dan collected all the Jews in chains, previous to their removal to Babylon ( Jeremiah 40:1 ). God therefore consoles her with the promise of their restoration. Matthew 2:17 Matthew 2:18 quotes this as fulfilled in the massacre of the innocents under Herod. "A lesser and a greater event, of different times, may answer to the single sense of one passage of Scripture, until the prophecy is exhausted" [BENGEL]. Besides the temporary reference to the exiles in Babylon, the Holy Spirit foreshadowed ultimately Messiah's exile in Egypt, and the desolation caused in the neighborhood of Rachel's tomb by Herod's massacre of the children, whose mothers had "sons of sorrow" (Ben-oni), just as Rachel had. The return of Messiah (the representative of Israel) from Egypt, and the future restoration of Israel, both the literal and the spiritual (including the innocents), at the Lord's second advent, are antitypical of the restoration of Israel from Babylon, which is the ground of consolation held out here by Jeremiah.They were not," that is, were dead ( Genesis 42:13 ), does not apply so strictly to the exiles in Babylon as it does to the history of Messiah and His people--past, present, and future. So the words, "There is hope in thine end," are to be fulfilled ultimately, when Rachel shall meet her murdered children at the resurrection, at the same time that literal Israel is to be restored. "They were not," in Hebrew, is singular; each was not: each mother at the Beth-lehem massacre had but one child to lament, as the limitation of age in Herod's order, "two years and under," implies; this use of the singular distributively (the mothers weeping severally, each for her own child), is a coincidence between the prophecy of the Beth-lehem massacre and the event, the more remarkable as not being obvious: the singular, too, is appropriate as to Messiah in His Egyptian exile, who was to be a leading object of Rachel's lamentation"

                                                         - - Jamieson , Faucet , Brown ;Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Israel, in the days of Jeremiah, suffered an estrangement from its sacred land, the equivalent of a separation from a holy environment; hence figuratively it was a spiritual death. Later, however, there would be restoration to a state of happiness. A similar circumstance would occur five centuries later. A brutal king would slaughter Bethlehem’s babies in an attempt to eliminate a rival King, Jesus; but God would bring his son back from the land of the dead. And as a result, a great spiritual reconciliation of peace would be available for all who yield to the Savior’s authority. A new “Israel” would be established (Galatians 3:26-27, 29; 6:16).
Professor Fairbairn once noted that, in a manner of speaking, Herod was the “new Nebuchanezzar.” The former by his cruel policies thought he would extinguish forever the hopes and aspirations of Israel. In like fashion, the bloody Herod thought he would eliminate the new Israel’s king by the massacre of Bethlehem’s babes. Both failed in their devilish ambitions (1859, 472).
Rachel’s tears were wiped away and the Messianic hope was revealed. Similarly, it can be so today; Jesus escaped the bloody hands of Herod, and those wise enough to seek refuge in him embrace the hope of everlasting life.   https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1442-rachels-tears


 
"A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more."
(Matthew 2:16-18)Slaughter was unleashed upon Bethlehem. Herod massacred all the boys two and under. It was a killing spree that filled Bethlehem's residents with immeasurable pain. So immeasurable was it that Matthew quotes Jeremiah's mournful words regarding Israel's pain during the Babylonian Exile.

But why does Matthew say that Jeremiah's words (quoted from Jeremiah 31:15) were fulfilled? You could argue that Bethlehem's pain was similar to Israel's pain during the Babylonian Exile. But isn't that response somewhat unsatisfying? It seems that there must be something more. And there is.

I believe that Matthew is connecting the exile pains in Jeremiah 31:15 with the angel's command to Joseph in Matthew 2:13: "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt".

Jesus, as typified by Hosea, experienced His own, personal exodus. But there's a problem. Jesus needed to meet a requirement in order to experience an exodus: he needed to first experience exile.

The pain experienced during the Babylonian Exile pointed to the pain experienced during the massacre in Bethlehem. The Babylonian Exile itself pointed ahead to Christ's own exile, from Bethlehem into a foreign land.

The verse that appears after Jeremiah 31:15 (the passage Matthew quotes) is especially interesting:

Thus says the Lord:
"Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears,
for there is a reward for your work,
declares the Lord,
and they shall come back from the land of the enemy."
(Jeremiah 31:16)

The exile of Christ began with terror, but hope did not fade. Just as God did not abandon his people after the Babylonian Exile, neither would He abandon His Son. Although Jesus was "forced" into Egypt, God also brought Him back out again.
http://blog.pricelesseternity.com/2012/07/jeremiahs-prophecy-rachel-weeping.html


From these the ignorance of the skeptic about the bible , biblical interpretation and prophecies can be deduced. The prophecies are given by God in his foreknowledge and omniscience. He alone interprets it to the seeker of truth. The natural man cannot understand the spiritual truths and God's ways of revealing them.

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