People without a country. Fathers and mothers trying to hold their frustrated families together by telling and re-telling the ancient stories of the good old days in far-off Jerusalem, now lying in ruins, the smoke of her ashes still twisting to the sky. People trying to eke out the best existence possible under the thumb of their Babylonian overlords.

Those are the people to whom these glorious and triumphant words of Isaiah were first shouted. If you were ever a prisoner of war, or if you were ever someone waiting for a war to be over and a loved one to come home, or if you were in the front lines when the news came, "the war is over," then you can appreciate these words more than the rest of us.

For these words were first proclaimed to a forsaken huddle of Israelites whose city had be…