Echoes of Rachel’s Weeping: Intertextuality and Trauma in Jer. 31:15

Abstract

The image of Rachel’s inconsolable weeping for her lost children in Jer. 31:15 presents a specific kind of response to a cultural trauma. As this paper argues, understanding this response is enriched both by analyzing the extra-textual literary strategy of the passage itself and by engaging in an intertextual reading of the ancient text with a contemporary artistic response to trauma. By means of an allusion to Genesis 37, Jer. 31:15 makes a case both for the continued existence of the people of Israel and for the legitimacy of experiencing the exile as a metaphorical death. What Jer. 31:15 accomplishes textually for a sixth century BCE Judean audience, the Witness Blanket accomplishes in a visual medium for threatened Canadian native cultures. Both texts stage a protest against the threat to the continued existence of culture by asserting the persistent potency of its cultural symbols.

The Quotation of Jer. 31.15 in Mt. 2.18 within Christological Patterning of Matthew’s Nativity According to the Joseph Story

“…Hebrew Bible scholarship has generally recognized the use of the Joseph story of Gen. 37–50 in Jeremiah 31, including specifically of Gen. 37.35 in Jer. 31.15 (e.g., Brown-Gutoff 1991: 184–85; Brueggemann 1997: 184; Lundbom 2004: 438; Mastnjak 2016: 54; Wanke 2003: 287; Doane and Mastnjak 2019: 421–22; and, most thoroughly, Teeter 2021: 443–87). 1 Might the use of one scriptural text by means of another be a key to a fuller understanding of Mt.…”