Isaiah's words are meant to bring comfort, to assure the people in what may have been the darkest time of the nation's existence. Isaiah's words assure the hearer that God will, in the latter days, restore the promised land and do away with the horrors of war altogether. This comfort comes in the midst of turmoil, in the thick of chaos and terror. And the same, surprisingly, with the words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. As the dust of the Roman conquest settled on Palestine, the people of Israel started to groan once again under the oppresive yoke of a foreign army.
Rebellious groups struggle against the chains under which they are held in servitude.
Eventually the Romans put an end to the Seleucid empire and made Palestine a Roman province, placing Palestine and its inhabitants firmly under the oppresive control of the Roman emperor and his armies. It's a rough time, and you, living in Palestine at the time Matthew was writing his gospel, chafe under the yoke that has been set upon your shoulders. The occupying Roman armies are arrogant, and are a law unto themselves. You look back, in time, to the days of glory for you and your people, way back in the midst of time to the era of King David, and you weep when you consider how far your people have sunk. You go to your scriptures and you read the Psalms and your insides clench into a knot when you read of God's promise to establish David and his descendants on the throne forever.