Jeremiah 31: 1 … “There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country.”
The nation’s future hope will contrast sharply with her present misery. The cry from Ramah was one of mourning and great weeping as Jeremiah pictured Rachel weeping for her children. To what was Jeremiah referring? Ramah was a town five miles north of Jerusalem, and Rachel was Joseph and Benjamin’s mother. Joseph was the father of Ephraim and Manasseh, who became the two major tribes in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Thus Jeremiah was picturing the weeping of the women of the Northern Kingdom as they watched their children being carried into exile in 722 b.c.
However, Jeremiah could also have had the 586 b.c. deportation of Judah in view because Ramah was the staging point for Nebuchadnezzar’s deportation (cf. 40:1). In all likelihood these women were crying because they would never see their children again. But as the women of Israel and Judah wept for their exiled children, God offered a word of comfort. There was hope for their future because their children would return to their own land. God would bring about a restoration.[1]
In the Lord we always have our hope no matter the circumstance of life. No matter the misery of life we must endure we can keep faith in God who is our hope.
