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Jeremiah 31:15 depicts Rachel — the matriarch — weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are gone. This is not corrected. God does not tell her to stop, or to trust more, or to be grateful for the children she had. He speaks into the weeping with a word of future hope — but he allows the weeping first. The grief of a parent who has lost a child is sanctioned in Scripture as the appropriate response to an unspeakable loss.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”
David's grief had a specific hope embedded in it: 'I shall go to him.' This is not a vague comfort. It is a confident expectation that the child is somewhere David would eventually reach. He did not say the child was simply gone.
“But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus rebuked the disciples who were keeping children away from him. He received them. The Greek word — prosekuneo — implies physical access, being brought to him. The God who said this does not turn children away.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
Death is categorized here as a 'former thing' — something that belonged to a passing age. The specific grief of burying a child is one of the tears God will personally wipe away. The intimacy of that gesture — face to face — is the point.
“Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.”
God records Rachel's inconsolable grief without correcting it. The refusal to be comforted is not a failure of faith — it is the honest state of a parent whose child is gone. God allows it before he speaks into it.
“The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”
The Hebrew word for 'nigh' — qarov — means physically near. God's proximity is specifically to the broken-hearted, not the composed. The grief of child loss is exactly the kind of broken heart this verse was written for.
David's response after his infant son's death is one of the most theologically condensed statements about afterlife hope in the Old Testament: "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23). After the child died, David ended his fast and resumed eating. His servants were confused. His explanation contains a quiet, specific confidence: the child cannot come back, but David will go to where the child is. He did not say "he is in a better place" in the general way people use that phrase. He said "I shall go to him" — which implies somewhere specific that both would inhabit.
Matthew 19:14 — "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven" — was Jesus' rebuke of his disciples who were turning children away. Jesus received children. He received them specifically, in his arms. The God who said this does not turn children away in death.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Jeremiah 31:15–17 sets up one of Scripture's most unusual sequences: Rachel weeping is acknowledged, the grief is honored, and then God says "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded... and there is hope in thine end" (v.16–17). The hope is not announced instead of the grief — it is announced after it, into it, as a word that coexists with loss. God names the grief before he names the hope.
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