We lack concrete historical record for Matthew's next episode (except a garbled account from Macrobius; Ramsay 1898:219), but it certainly fits Herod's character (France 1979; compare Soares Prabhu 1976:227-28; Stauffer 1960:35-41). When Herod's young brother-in-law was becoming too popular, he had a "drowning accident" in what archaeology shows was a rather shallow pool; later, falsely accused officials were cudgeled to death on Herod's order (Jos. War 1.550-51). Wrongly suspecting two of his sons of plotting against him, he had them strangled (Jos. Ant. 16.394; War 1.550-51), and five days before his own death the dying Herod had a more treacherous, Absalom-like son executed (Ant. 17.187, 191; War 1.664-65). Thus many modern writers repeat the probably apocryphal story that Augustus remarked, "Better to be Herod's pig than his son" (Ramsay 1898:219-20).

The murder of the children of Bethlehem thus fits Herod's character; yet it is not surprising that other early writers do not mention this particular atrocity. Herod's reign was an era of many highly placed political murders, and our accounts come from well-to-do reporters focused on the royal house and national events. In such circles the execution of perhaps twenty children in a small town would warrant little attention-except from God (see France 1979:114-19).

Matthew does not simply report this act of injustice dispassionately; he chooses an ancient lament from one of the most sorrowful times of his people's history. Jeremiah 31:15 speaks of Rachel weeping for her children, poetically describing the favored mother of Benjamin (standing for all Judah) mourning because her descendants were led into exile (see Montefiore 1968:2:10-11). Rachel, who wept from her grave in Bethlehem during the captivity, was now weeping at another, nearer crisis significant in salvation history (compare Mt 1:12, 17).

More important, however, the context in Jeremiah 31 also implies future hope. Rachel weeps for her children, but God comforts her, promising the restoration of his people (Jer 31:15-17), because Israel is "my dear son, the child in whom I delight" (Jer 31:20; compare Mt 2:15; 3:17). This time of new salvation will be the time of a new covenant (Jer 31:31-34). The painful events of Jesus' persecuted childhood are the anvil on which God will forge the fulfillment of his promises to his people, just as the cross will usher in the new covenant (Mt 26:28).

This text shows that God called his son Jesus to identify with the suffering and exile of his people (as in 1:12, 17; compare Jer 43:5-7) as he identified with their exodus (Mt 2:15). In his incarnation Jesus identified not only with humanity in an abstract sense but with the history of a people whose history is also spiritually the history of all believers (because we have been grafted into their history and use their Scriptures).

Yet we may also suspect that this identification speaks of a God who feels our human pain as deeply as we do. While philosophers and theologians must address the problem of evil intellectually, many grieving people inside and outside our churches face it existentially. To broken people wounded by this world's evil, Jesus' sharing our pain offers a consolation deeper than reasoned arguments: God truly understands and cares-and paid an awful price to begin to make things better.