This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Here, in the first place, the Prophet describes the desolation of the land, when deprived of all its inhabitants; and, in the second place, he adds a comfort, — that God would restore the captives from exile, that the land might again be inhabited.
This paragraph is much to the same purport with the last, publishing to the world, as well as to the church, the purposes of God's love concerning his people. This is a word of the Lord which the nations must hear, for it is a prophecy of a work of the Lord which the nations cannot but take notice of.
Commenting on Jeremiah 31:10-17
Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah,.... Which signifies a high place; hence the Targum paraphrases it, "in the high place of the world;'' and so the Vulgate Latin version, "in a high place;'' but it is here the proper name of a place, of a city in the tribe of Benjamin, Jos 18:25; and this voice heard was not a voice...