The massacre of the innocents is told in only two sentences in only one of the gospels.
Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, ‘In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’ (Matthew 2:16-18)
We have an irrational and petty king lashing out and killing children for no reason, and then the mention of prophecy fulfilled, giving the whole thing a feeling of inevitability. There’s a whiplash effect: an utterly senseless act of violence that seems to come out of nowhere, yet this act was always going to happen. It has always been happening. The grammar of the Jeremiah quote, at least in the King James Version, gives it all a slippery temporality: In Rama was there a voice heard, Rachel’s children are not, and Rachel’s weeping is happening in the future of the gospel’s present.
