Composed in the wake of 9/11,
“The Dream Isaiah Saw”
quickly became a contemporary Christmas classic. The hymn’s powerful evocation of the peaceable kingdom on God’s holy mountain, described by the greatest of Hebrew prophets in Isaiah 11:6–9, is, in some respects, wrenchingly difficult to hear at Christmas 2023. For once again, after Hamas’s attack on Israel, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not” (Jer. 31:15)—the Old Testament text used by Matthew to weave Herod’s slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem into the master narrative of salvation history.