'The height' — a town of BENJAMIN a few miles north of Jerusalem, usually identified with er-Ram on the road toward Bethel. Jeremiah names it as the place where a voice is heard weeping (31:15 in English Bibles, 31:14 in the Hebrew), and it was the staging point where the captives of Judah were mustered before the march to Babylon (Jeremiah 40:1) — which is why a lament sung over lost children belongs there. ⚠ Two knots are worth naming rather than smoothing. First, Rachel's tomb: Genesis puts her burial 'on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem' (35:19), south of Jerusalem, while Jeremiah's 'in Ramah' and 1 Samuel 10:2 place it in Benjamin, to the north; the two traditions are ancient and unreconciled, and Matthew's citation at 2:18 works with the Bethlehem one. Second, Samuel's home town is also called Ramah (1 Samuel 1:19), and whether that is this Ramah or the 'Ramathaim of the hill country of Ephraim' of 1 Samuel 1:1 is still argued — so this entry does not claim it.