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MATTHEW 2:17 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
Matt 2:16Matt 2:18
“Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,”
Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. Matthew's fulfillment formula is uncharacteristically bleak here — the event being fulfilled is not rescue but slaughter. The citation of Jeremiah 31:15 is honest about the darkness of the event being narrated. Matthew does not paper over the grief of Bethlehem's mothers with a promise that the child was saved. The fulfillment formula communicates that this tragedy is not outside God's foreknowledge or beyond God's purposes, even as it refuses to minimize the reality of the suffering. Romans 8:28 does not say that everything is good but that all things work together for good — Matthew's use of Jeremiah maintains both the grief and the sovereign purpose without collapsing them.

Church Fathers on Matthew 2:17

The Evangelist by this history of so bloody a massacre, having filled the reader with horror, now again sooths his feelings, shewing that these things were not done because God could not hinder, or knew not of them; but as the Prophet had foretold.

Chrysostom · 4th century · Hom. ix

This passage of Jeremiah has been quoted by Matthew neither according to the Hebrew nor the LXX version. This shews that the Evangelists and Apostles did not follow any one’s translation, but according to the Hebrew manner expressed in their own words what they had read in Hebrew.

Jerome · 4th century · In Hierem, 31, 15

Or, it was heard on high, because uttered for the death of the innocent, according to that, 'The voice of the poor entereth into the heavens.' The 'weeping' means the cries of the children; 'lamentation,' refers to the mothers. In the infants themselves their death ends their cries, in the mothers it is continually renewed by the remembrance of their loss.

Pseudo-Chrysostom · 5th century
Read all 11 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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Matthew 2:17 — Community Reflections | HolyStudy