Ramah

Ramah was Samuel's whole life in one town. His father Elkanah's home was Ramathaim-zophim, in the hill country of Ephraim, before Samuel was even born. After Samuel grew up serving at Shiloh, his family kept its home at Ramah, and once he became judge over Israel, he made it the base of his life's work. Samuel rode a circuit each year, from Bethel to Gilgal to Mizpah, judging Israel in each place, but he always returned to Ramah, where his own house stood and where he built an altar to the LORD. When the elders of Israel finally came asking for a king, they came to Samuel at Ramah to ask him. Ramah is where David ran when Saul's jealousy turned murderous. David went to Samuel and told him everything Saul had done, and the two of them went together to a place called Naioth. Saul sent messengers to capture David there, but the Spirit of God came on them instead, and they began to prophesy. Saul sent more messengers, with the same result, and finally Saul himself came and prophesied before Samuel, stripped of his royal robes on the ground. When Samuel died, all Israel gathered to mourn him, and he was buried at his own home in Ramah. That burial is mentioned twice, once plainly and once again as the setup for Saul's later, desperate visit to a medium at Endor. A different Ramah, close to Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin, carries its own weight in Scripture. Jeremiah pictures a voice heard there, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. Centuries later Matthew quotes that same verse of Herod's slaughter of the children at Bethlehem, reading an old picture of grief finding a fresh and terrible fulfillment in his own generation.