the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Ramah
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or RAMAH (Matthew 2:18) was a city of Benjamin (Joshua 18:25), the site of which has been identified with er-Râm, a small village situated about 5 miles north of Jerusalem, at an elevation of about 2600 feet above the sea. Ramah was the point at which Jeremiah parted from the exiles who were being carried away to Babylon (Jeremiah 40:1), and he associated it with Rachel in the passage (Jeremiah 31:15) which is quoted by the First Evangelist. This seems to imply that he considered Rachel’s tomb to be in the neighbourhood; and the existence of such a tradition is supported by the account in 1 Samuel 10:2, which states that Rachel was buried ‘in the border of Benjamin.’ The mention of Ramah in the NT quotation is a detail which has no significance in relation to the massacre of the Innocents, since Bethlehem was 10 miles away, on the other side of Jerusalem. See Rachel.
James Patrick.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Ramah'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/r/ramah.html. 1906-1918.
