There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt — worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. The wailing anticipated here will be fulfilled in Exodus 12:30: there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. The wailing over Egypt's firstborn sons mirrors the wailing over Hebrew infant sons that Pharaoh's edict commanded in Exodus 1:22. What was done to Israel's sons will be done to Egypt's sons — not out of divine vindictiveness but out of covenant justice: life for life, son for son. Matthew 2:18 quotes Jeremiah 31:15 — Rachel weeping for her children — in the context of Herod's massacre of the innocents that echoes Exodus 1. The crying over Egypt's firstborn and the crying over Bethlehem's infants are woven into the same narrative of the cost of oppression and the cost of liberation.

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