I think there are two elements that contribute to 'ha'ben yakir li Ephraim' bring chosen as the haftarah for the second day of Rosh haShana:
1) As a parallel to the kriah on the first day which speaks about our matriarch Sarah and Hashem's fulfillment of her desire to have a child we read about our matriarch Rachel and her desire for the return of all her children.
2) Lest a person think that the job of repentance is too great and too overwhelming we read the words "yesh tikvah l'achriseich," Hashem's encouragement not to give up hope.
I don't know how you can read the final words of that pasuk, "v'shavu banim li'gevulam," without being moved by the fact that for hundreds and hundreds of years Jews have read this promise of return and it was always a distant dream, but we have been zocheh to see it happening in our lifetime.
1) Rachel's cry for her missing children, though lengthy, is temporary; her cry over Torah text that relocates Binyamin's fatal birth to Padan Aram (35:24 & 26), is endless. {a problem birth* was ascribed TO Beis La'chem a thousand years of so after that of Ben Oni: midah k'neged midah?}
ReplyDelete*part of a problematic movement claiming to replace [re-place] the Torah
2) ha'tikvah, the medina's national anthem, never mentions G-d, as if the former Capitalist Owner of the land were best forgotten in the Marxian march forward...