Living in the End Times: the Prophetic Language of Bob Dylan

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Living in the End Times: the Prophetic
Language of Bob Dylan
Frances Di Lauro
To say that religion – and the quest for cosmic revelation – is an
integral part of rock ‘n’ roll may seem to some to be widely missing
the point. To millions of devoted fans, rock doesn’t simply deal with
religion. Rock is religion … For rock’s true believers, church is a
concert hall, a leather jacket the vestment … Nihilist or optimist,
epicurean or anarchist, demonic or divine; more often than not …
rock ‘n’ roll’s prophets are the champions of causes lost and won
long ago and many times before … rock is music that embodies,
celebrates, and mourns conditions of the human spirit – conditions
familiar to saints and sinners throughout history.1
When Bob Dylan converted to Christianity in the late 1970’s the
sense of a new condition2 resonated in the subsequent three albums
he produced,3 causing irritation to some of fans who resented his
overtly evangelistic and eschatological lyrics and, in particular, the
demarcation he drew between those who would be saved and those
who would not.4 Dylan’s lyrics had, however, even more than a
decade before his conversion, always reflected an eschatological
consciousness which was expressed through more oblique allusions
to the bible.5 While a number of studies examine evidence for biblical
1 D Seay with M Neely: Stairway to Heaven:The Spiritual Roots of Rock ‘n Roll – From
the King and Little Richard to Prince and Amy Grant, New York, 1986, 7-8.
2 Dylan referred to the experience as a rebirth, ‘… can you imagine being reborn, can
you imagine turning into another person? It happens spiritually, it don’t happen
mentally [1981]’ quoted in C Heylin: Dylan the Biography: Behind the Shades, London,
1991, 328.
3 Slow Train Coming was released on 18 August 1979; Saved was released on 20
June 1980, and Shot of Love was released on 12 August 1981, from C Heylin (1996),
Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, New York), 129, 131 and 137 respectively.
Although the lyrics of every song on Dylan’s next album, Infidels, which was released
on 1 November 1983, contained overt allusions to the Bible, only two of them,
‘Jokerman’ and ‘Man of Peace’, drew on New Testament material. C Heylin: Dylan the
Biography, op cit, 369.
4 ‘Don’t matter how much money you got, there’s only two kinds of people: there’s
saved people and there’s lost people’ spoken by Bob Dylan in 1979 and quoted by
Heylin, ibid, 352.
5 Bert Cartwright states that in some cases it is clear that Dylan cites a specific
translation from either the King James Version or the Revised Standard Version but
that ‘It is clear, contrary too some critical analysts, that Dylan was not bound to the use

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influence in Dylan’s lyrics, most focus almost exclusively on the
material he composed after his self-disclosed conversion, which
rather easily presents itself. Gilmour, for example, uses links between
Dylan’s lyrics and biblical tracts to demonstrate ‘christological’
elements in Dylan’s later writings; namely his identification with Jesus
as an innocent martyr and rejected prophet. One exception, Ricks,
surveys many of Dylan’s songs from his entire writing history from the
perspective of literary critic but assembles them into a biblical
paradigm; the ‘seven deadly sins’ as a ‘handle to take hold of the
bundle’ rather than to claim ‘that most of Dylan’s songs’ are ‘bent on
sin.’6 Cartwright, whose invaluable The Bible in the Lyrics of Bob
Dylan (1990) has been termed ‘the most complete study of the
subject,’7 encompasses Dylan’s entire literary history as the
‘songpoet of a generation,’8 but nevertheless mainly focuses on the
phases of Dylan’s career after his near-fatal motorcycle accident in
1966. The first phase, which he terms Dylan’s ‘folk culture period’ is
covered in less than eight pages and comments on a very small
selection of songs9 from that most formative, yet least explored
period. He comments, in extreme brevity, on two of Dylan’s songs
during this phase which he terms ‘apocalyptic’ in character, ‘The
Times they are a-Changin’’ and ‘It’s all over Now, Baby Blue,’
concluding that Dylan used apocalyptic myth in the former song ‘to
bring judgment upon the society which may read out its Bible but to
no avail.’10 In the case of the latter song, however, he was unable to
of the King James Version.’ However, he provides no source for his assertion. B
Cartwright: The Bible in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan, revised and enlarged, Texas, 1992,
17. Gray, on the other hand, argues ‘that Dylan’s overwhelming preference . . . is for
the Authorized Version.’ M Gray: Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan, London,
2000, 7. Gilmour demonstrates that after his conversion Dylan quoted directly and
exclusively from the King James Version and that version has been consulted for this
essay on the basis that this version would definitely have been accessible in the US
during the period covered in this analysis, that is between 1961 and 1968. M Gilmour:
‘They Refused Jesus Too: A Biblical Paradigm in the Writing of Bob Dylan,’ in Journal
of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol 1, Spring 2002,
http://www.usask.ca/relst/rpc/preyprint.html, accessed 15 August 2004.
6 C Ricks: Dylan’s Vision of Sin, London, 2003, 2, 6.
7 Gilmour, op cit.
8 Cartwright, op cit, 11. Sarlin also refers to Dylan as a ‘songpoet’. in B Sarlin: Turn it
up! I Can’t Hear the Words, London, 1975, 43.
9 Cartwright’s book does include a list of biblical annotations which list the lines/verses
of lyrics in Dylan’s songs and the corresponding biblical references. Cartwright only
lists one entry for ‘Blowin’ in the Wind;’ the deluge account in Genesis, but does not
include any commentary or discussion on this reference anywhere in the book.
10 Cartwright, op cit, 28.

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intuit Dylan’s ‘intention.’11 This paper will provide a close examination
of Dylan’s early period to isolate the nascence of what was to
become perhaps one of the most famous manifestations of religion in
popular culture in the twentieth century; popular music.
Cartwright12 is not alone in associating the lyrics of some of Dylan’s
early songs with apocalypticism. Heylin describes ‘When the Ship
Comes in’ as a ‘vengefully joyous paean to an apocalypse that will
sweep away the fools the author does not suffer gladly …’13 and finds
allusions ‘to the apocalyptic tracts of the Old Testament abound in
both it’ and ‘The Times they are a-Changin.’14
The designation ‘apocalyptic’ is probably imprecise in this case,
particularly if associated with Old Testament literature. The
‘apocalypses’ (from the Greek meaning disclosures or revelations)
were products of the Maccabæan struggle written in the inter-
testamental period. The most prominent is the Book of Daniel (c 168
BCE). Of almost equal importance is the apocryphal Book of Enoch
(c 170-100 BCE), which has been termed a ‘Jewish prototype of the
Catholic Dante.’15 Apocalyptic literature was characterised by an
artificial method; the authors issued their writings under the names of
great persons of the past (such as Enoch) then proceeded to predict
history up to their own time. With the combination of authority and
self-authenticating ‘prophecy,’ predictions of impending events were
seen as credible. Many of its features became typical in later
Christian apocalyptic literature of the first two centuries of the
Common Era.16 It can be further differentiated from other Biblical
literature by the ecstatic visions and the elaborate imagery, such as
beasts and supernatural beings, and the symbolic language used to
describe them.17 The label ‘apocalyptic,’ is, therefore, problematic,
given that these distinguishing features are not found in Dylan’s
11 What is most relevant for the present analysis not to discover Dylan’s intentions, but
to assess the specific character of the biblical archetypes he draws upon and the way
he uses imagery and metaphor in the lyrics of some of his early songs.
12 Cartwright, op cit, 25-28.
13 Heylin, Dylan the Biography, op cit, 76.
14 Ibid, 75.
15 B Baldensperger: Das Selbsbewusstsein Jesu im Licht der messianischen
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, 1892, 9, as cited in W Fairweather: The Background of the
Gospels: Judaism in the Period between the Old and New Testaments, Edinburgh,
1961, 223.
16 Fairweather, op cit, 402-403.
17 Ibid, 247.

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189
lyrics, and that none of the Biblical references he alludes to are from
the appropriate period.
A precursor to apocalyptic literature was ‘post-exilic prophesy,’ which
combined symbolic imagery and visions and viewed the future as an
unalterable historical unfolding of divine providence. Prophetic
writings are further characterised by a vocabulary of hope and, in
contrast to the closely related wisdom literature, which disregarded
eschatology and imminent expectation, post-exilic prophetic literature
forecasts a last judgment. The most prominent examples of this
genre are Zechariah, Joel and Isaiah.18 It is further worth noting that
the visionary forms modelled by Zechariah and Ezekiel were ‘in
nearly every instance’ adopted by apocalypticists.19 It will become
apparent that Dylan also frequently used adaptations of tracts from
both Ezekiel and Isaiah in the lyrics of songs examined in this paper.
This may account for the tendency of some commentators to
associate features of his lyrics with ‘apocalyptic tracts’ and, in turn, to
label them so.
Perhaps then, for the present purposes the term ‘eschatological’ most
adequately denotes any ideas, characteristics, motifs and so on,
which constitute the matrix of distinctive elements of eschatology.
Soulen defined eschatology as ‘a radical turn or transformation of this
world’ and, to quote Schweitzer, as ‘a future but imminent act [in
which] God would bring the present evil age to a close and replace it
with His own divine rule.’20 Bearing in mind then, that eschatology is
an inherent feature of prophetic literature, which articulates a
theology of hope, the term prophetic may best describe the qualities
of Bob Dylan’s words which could ‘mesmerize an audience.’21
Indeed those ‘who had never heard Dylan or his songs before’ and
who ‘had come to take part in a movement, and … discovered a
prophet:’22
18 Ibid, 402-403.
19 Ibid, 247.
20 R N Soulen: Handbook of Biblical Criticism, Second Edition (Revised and
Augmented), Atlanta, 1981, 64; and A Schweitzer: The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A
Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarcus to Wrede, translated by W Montgomery,
New York, 1948.
21 Sarlin, op cit, 36.
22 A Scaduto: Bob Dylan, Great Britain, 1972, 148.

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He didn’t have much of a voice, but people listened anyway; the
words he was singing required it … Dylan used prophecy, parable,
accusation, doggerel, metaphor and confession to force popular
music back to its roots as folk poetry and commentary … From
protest to psychedelics to back-to-the country to faith to selfishness,
he pulled a generation along like a VW drafting in the wake of a
semi. ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind
blows,’ but Dylan knew things before the rest of us did.23
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941 in
Duluth, Minnesota to Abraham and Beatty Stone Zimmerman.24 In
1946 the Jewish family moved to Hibbing, whose religious and
cultural infrastructure was predominantly Catholic, and where the
anti-Semitic sentiments of its residents was acutely palpable. With no
rabbi in the town, the Jewish citizens looked to nearby Duluth for
spiritual guidance, which magnified the sense of dislocation for that
close-knit community on the social periphery. Abe Zimmerman
attended B’Nai B’Rith25 lodges and, from 1954, the young Bob
Zimmerman regularly attended a Hadassah Club’s quarterly Zionist
camps at which he ‘didn’t seem to mind speaking Hebrew.’26 At
about the time Robert’s bar-mitzvah was due in 1954,27 a rabbi and
his wife came to live in Hibbing for about a year. The visitors were
accommodated above a rock and roll café which the young Robert
liked to frequent:
He showed up just in time for me to learn this stuff. I used to go up
there every day to learn this stuff, either after school or after dinner.
After studying with him an hour or so, I’d come down and boogie.28
Dylan had, therefore, well before the time he recorded his debut
album Bob Dylan in November 1961, developed an historical and
psychological consciousness which was informed by his awareness
of the extermination large numbers of Jews under the Nazi regime;
the conversion of many Jews to Christianity after World War II;
23 An abridgement of a passage Cartwright quotes from page 7 of Life Magazine’s Fall
1990 edition, in which Dylan was listed among the ‘100 most important Americans of
the 20th Century.’ In Cartwright, op cit, 9-10.
24 W McKeen: Bob Dylan: A Bio-Bibliography, Westport, 1993, 4.
25 A Jewish fraternal order. R Shelton: No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob
Dylan, New York, 1986, 25.
26 Ibid, 39.
27 Cartwright, op cit, 119.
28 Heylin, Dylan the Biography, op cit, 5.

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growing up in an anti-Semitic town, and his study with the rabbi in
Hibbing. In addition, as he searched to reconstitute a displaced
identity, Dylan would also have been exposed to a variety of literary
treatments, terminologies and schemas which dealt with all manner of
concerns associated with violent conflict, subjugation and oppression
as he devoured ‘everything he could lay his eyes on:’29
His lyrics reveal more than a nodding acquaintance with literary
figures such as William Blake, Shakespeare, T S Eliot, F Scott
Fitzgerald, Exra Pound, John Steinbeck, Allen Ginsberg, British
balladeers, the English Romantic poets and the French symbolists.
His philosophical insights are derived from Nietzsche, Sartre,
Camus and especially Gabriel Marcel. His lyrics are studded with
references to scientists and movie stars, singers of the blues and
desperadoes of the West. And there was always his ever-present
allusions and echoes relating to the Bible.30
Shelton tells of a large bible which he kept open on a reading stand in
his home in the late 1960s.31 In 1968 Dylan’s mother, Beatty
Zimmerman, discussed the pre-eminence of that Bible:
In his house in Woodstock today, there’s a huge Bible on a stand in
the middle of his study. Of all the books that crowd his house,
overflow from his house, that Bible gets the most attention. He’s
continuously getting up and going over to refer to something
[1968].32
These diverse interests came to inform and influence his lyrics more
and more as his career developed. His music, on the other hand,
reflects his other long-term passion, American folk music, which
seemed to resonate from the very soul and political subconscious of
post-war America. By February 1962, Dylan had embarked on what
was to be a two-year course of writing protest songs. Of that time he
reflects that he ‘was still learning language then’ and ‘was still too
scared to sing’ what he was writing.33 He consciously set the popular
concerns and sentiments of his generation to an anthemic, ‘hand-
clapping, foot-stomping form of gospel’ music for maximum effect,
29 Shelton, op cit, 4.
30 B. Cartwright, op cit, 10-11.
31 Shelton, op cit, 4.
32 Heylin, Dylan the Biography, op cit, 185.
33 Ibid, 47.

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with promises of an egalitarian future,34 expressed in epigrammatic
terms. When he performed at the Lincoln Memorial during the Civil
Rights March on Washington on 28 August 1963, Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in
the Wind’ was the anthem of the middle-class white youth of
America.35 Intrinsically much of his music expressed moral outrage
and the particular transgressions which incensed him most were the
brutality of racial and social injustice and war. The grievances and
laments in his lyrics of this period almost exclusively reflect these two
concerns.
On 27 May 1963 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album was released by
Columbia Records.36 Included on that album was ‘Blowin’ in the
Wind’ which Dylan had recorded on 9 July 196237 and which was
subsequently released as a single in July 1963. The song was
recorded during the period of tension leading to the commencement
of the Vietnam War. The first verse of the song deals overtly with the
issue of war, and appeals in the name of pacifism, for a terminal point
or ‘end time’ to warring:
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.38
The dove, the symbol of peace, is juxtaposed here with cannonballs,
a reference to armed conflict. The second question appears to be a
direct reference to the plight of Noah’s dove, released three times to
survey the earth:
Also he [Noah] sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were
abated from off the face of the ground. The dove found no rest for
the soles of her foot and she returned to him in the ark, for the
waters were on the face of the whole earth …
(Genesis 8:8-9)
34 Ibid, 67.
35 D Seay with M Neely, op cit, 324.
36 C Heylin: Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, New York, 1996, 13-14.
37 C Heylin, Dylan the Biography, op cit, 13-14.
38 B Dylan, Bob Dylan: Writings and Drawings, St. Albans, 1974, 57.

Living in the End Times: the prophetic language of Bob Dylan
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The dove is also and metaphor for peacemaker, found ‘no rest for the
soles of her foot’ because the land was still submerged by
floodwaters, a common purging agent or symbol for purification.
When sent out again, the dove returned with an olive leaf, another
symbol of peace. Finally, after seven more days, she ‘returned not
again unto him any more,’39 presumably having found a place to rest
or, as Dylan terms it, ‘sleep in the sand:’
The second verse addresses the question of racial and social
injustice and oppression, appealing for divine intervention:
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.40
Given the dove imagery in the previous verse, the most obvious
analogue to the first question appears in Genesis 7:2041 where the
mountains become submerged. Ezekiel 6,2-3 is also told to
‘prophesy’ against the mountains that God ‘will bring a sword upon
you, and I will destroy your high places’42 and in Habakkuk 3,6 He
‘shakes the nations, scattering the everlasting mountains and
levelling the hills.’43 However, the most striking parallel can be found
in Revelation 8:8, ‘And the second angel sounded, and as it were a
great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.’44 That
paradigm of immovability, the mountain, eventually yields to God’s
wrath and is cast into the sea. Dylan strikes directly at oppression
and his charge is against the intentional oversight of man who
‘pretends that he just doesn’t see.’
39 The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments in the King James Version,
Nashville, 1997, Old Testament, Genesis 8,8-12, 5.
40 B. Dylan, op cit, 57.
41 Ibid,Old Testament, Genesis 7,20, 4.
42 Ibid, Old Testament, Ezekiel 6,2-3, 483.
43 Ibid, Old Testament, Habakkuk 3,6, 541.
44 Ibid, New Testament, Revelation 8,8, 163; and Cartwrigt, op cit.

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The visual theme is carried over to the next verse but in this case,
combined with the auditory to denote perception:
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.45
These rhetorical lyrics are reminiscent of the prophetic writings of
Isaiah46 and Ezekiel:
Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but
perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears
heavy, and shut their eyes: lest they see with their eyes, and hear
with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be
healed.
(Isaiah 6:9)
Seeing many things, but thou observest not; opening the ears, but
he heareth not.
(Isaiah 42:20)
Son of man, though dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house,
which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and
hear not …’
(Ezekiel 12:2)
Burris cites a parallel in 13:13 of the Gospel of Matthew which states:
‘... they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not,’47 An account
which accords with Luke 10:24 ‘… many prophets have desired to
45 B Dylan, op cit, 57.
46 Some disagreement exists between Robinson, Knight and Skinner, over whether
chapters 24-27 of Isaiah are apocalyptic in character and deserve (like the book of
Daniel) to be characterised as such. Morris concurs with Skinner that whilst Isaiah can
be identified as eschatological, the apocalyptic features it possesses are insufficient to
warrant those chapters being termed apocalyptic. Isaiah, rather possesses evidence
of ‘thinking that was capable of developing and in due course did develop into
apocalyptic.’ L Morris, Apocalyptic, London, 1972, 81-82.
47 Skylar H Burris, Freelance Writer and Editor,
http://www.literatureclassics.com/ancientpaths/dylan2.html accessed 10 June 2004,
1:00pm; The Holy Bible, op cit, New Testament, Matthew 13:13, 9.

Living in the End Times: the prophetic language of Bob Dylan
195
see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear
those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.48‘ However,
these New Testament examples no doubt draw some of their
terminology and form from the familiar, formulaic tracts of Old
Testament prophetic literature already cited above. In the same way
Dylan drew from these literary precedents which were embedded in
his consciousness; songs which were ‘there before I came along. I
just sort of came and just sort of took it down with a pencil, but it was
all there before I came around.’49 Dylan used these metaphors50 to
reinforce humanity’s failure to apprehend or tendency to ignore the
horror and intrinsic immorality of war.
Throughout the song the desperate appeal for an ‘end time’ to
suffering is posed by the recurring question ‘how many …’ This is
also a recurring question in prophetic literature such as Isaiah, who
asks: ‘Lord, how long?’ in 6.10; in Numbers 14.11 where God asks
Moses ‘How long will this people provoke me?,’51 and Numbers 14:27
where He again asks ‘How long shall I bear with this evil
congregation.’ It is interesting that prophetic literature is again
implicated in this instance.52
Finally, every verse of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ is punctuated with the
refrain which declares that the ‘answer is blowin’ in the wind,’ a
location in which Nahum 1.3 suggests God is domiciled: ‘the Lord
hath his way in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the
dust of His feet,’53 and which is reinforced by Ecclesiastes 5.15-16:
‘As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go
as he came … and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the
wind?’54 Ecclesiastes 3 in fact sets the tone for an ambience of
patience in which every event or change will occur in accordance with
a preordained agenda, ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time
…’55 This tends to eliminate the sense of imminence that typically
48 The Holy Bible, op cit, New Testament, Luke 10:24, 47.
49 Scaduto, op cit, 120.
50 In 1959 Dylan equated Woody Guthrie, his inspirational hero, to ‘the biblical prophets
who sang the news,’ Shelton, op cit, 81. Dylan later told interviewers that meeting
Guthrie, however, ‘cured him of his belief in idols,’ Sarlin, op cit, 43.
51 Ibid, Old Testament, Numbers 14,11, 97.
52 Morris, op cit, 36-37.
53 The Holy Bible, op cit, Old Testament, Nahum, 1,3, 540.
54 Ibid, Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 5,15, 400.
55 Ibid, Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 3, 399.

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characterises apocalyptic exhortations, which are ‘grounded in the
expectation of imminent judgment and redemption.’56 It is only fair to
qualify here, as was observed by von Rad, that ‘the concept of
absolute time … was unknown to Isreal;’57 that the periodisation of
time was configured within a framework of past events, recurrent
events (ritualised celebrations) and the prophesied future. Even
though nothing more precise than ‘some time in the near future’ could
be attempted, there was a sense of imminence and the expectation
was couched in their own lifetimes.
If ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ lacked a sense of imminent, Divine
intervention, the same could not be said for ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna
Fall,’ a treatise which was released on the same album and which
centres on a cataclysmic event:
… I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world …58
Recorded on 6 December 1962, ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’59 had
been composed in September of the same year in the Gaslight Café60
and performed for the first time ‘within a matter of days’61 at Carnegie
Hall. Once again Dylan uses water as the expurgatory medium and
more specifically flooding as a metaphor for collective expurgation.
The title of the song was thought to be a euphemism for acid rain or
‘nuclear fall-out’ inspired by the looming Cuban missile crisis,
however, Dylan denied this. He had an external, cosmic agency in
mind:
It’s not atomic rain, it’s not fall-out rain … I mean some sort of end
that’s just got to happen [1963] … I wrote it at the time of the Cuban
crisis. People sat around wondering if it was the end, and so did I
… It was a song of desperation.62
That sense of desperation and of an imminent and inevitable ‘end;’
the sense that ‘God [would intervene] in the last days,’ and the sense
56 E E Johnson: The Function of Apocalyptic and Wisdom Traditions in Romans 9-11,
Atlanta, 1989, 68-69.
57 G Von Rad: The Message of the Prophets, New York, 1968, 77.
58 Dylan, op cit, 66.
59 Heylin, Dylan the Biography, op cit, 14.
60 Ibid, 17.
61 Ibid, 56-58.
62 Bob Dylan in 1965, cited in Ibid, 57.

Living in the End Times: the prophetic language of Bob Dylan
197
of ‘living in the last times’ were all conveyed in literature termed
apocalyptic63 which, according to Freedman, is ‘born of crisis.’64 It
must be remembered though that these are generic features of both
apocalyptic and prophetic literature, and that the former was
modelled on the latter. Once again classifying Dylan’s lyrics, Heylin
surmises that Dylan deliberately attempted ‘to write a song which
would fuse the anthemic nature of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ with the
apocalyptic conceit of ‘Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ when he composed
“The Times they are a-Changin.”’65
On 13 January 1964 Dylan released ‘The Times they are a-
Changin’’66 on an album by the same title. Recorded on 24 October
1963,67 the song, ‘The Times they are a-Changin’’ (see Appendix 1)
reads like a nexus to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ with the answers to those
questions posed in the latter song encapsulated in the heralding of an
impending, abrupt change in the order of things.
Cartwright believes the title of the song was inspired by Daniel 2:21
which states that God ‘changes times and seasons; he removes
kings and sets up kings.’ His only comment on the first verse is that
the change in the times will be ‘apocalyptic,’ along the lines of ‘Noah’s
flood,’68 but in his biblical annotations at the end of the book he draws
a direct parallel with the lines 3-10 of this verse and references to the
deluge in Genesis 6-7 and Matthew 24;36-39. Cartwright makes a
logical association, however, lines 9 and 10, ‘Then you’d better start
swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone’69 are clearly a reference to the
song of Moses in Exodus 15:5 which rejoices the drowning of the
Egyptians in the Red Sea:70 ‘The depths have covered them: they
sank into the bottom as a stone.’71 There can be no uncertainty on
this point as Dylan refers explicitly to the Exodus passage in the self-
consciously biblical lyrics of ‘When the Ship Comes In’ (recorded on
63 Morris, op cit, 40.
64 D N Freedman: ‘The Flowering of Apocalyptic,’ in Journal for Theology and the
Church, No. 6, 173, 1969, as cited by Morris, op cit, 39.
65 Heylin, Dylan the Biography, op cit, 75.
66 The lyrics, from Dylan, op cit, 131-132 are reproduced in full in Appendix 1.
67 Heylin, Bob Dylan, op cit, 23-24.
68 B Cartwright, op cit, 27.
69 Dylan, op cit, 131.
70 Ricks, op cit, 265-266.
71 The Holy Bible, op cit, Old Testament, Exodus 15:5, 45.

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23 October 1963 and also released on The Times they are A-
Changin’ album):
And like Pharaoh’s tribe
They’ll be drownded [sic] in the tide,
And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered.72
In those lyrics Dylan reveals an identification with God’s 'chosen
people’ in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy which characterises ‘The
Times they are a’Changin;’’ confronting the intended audience (‘you’
or, more precisely, ‘them’73) to act, with the instruction that they
‘admit’ and ‘accept’ what they can no longer ignore. They are
immersed in the evidence and only two options remain; sink or swim.
Here the lyrics seem to coalesce with the conventions of
‘eschatology’ which:
… furnishes, therefore, a special revelation about the imminent
ending of that evil world, about the liberation and exaltation of us
and the conversion, punishment, or annihilation of them, and about
a new situation in which we are taken up to heaven or heaven
descends to embrace us.74
In the following two verses of ‘The Times they are A-Changin’’, the
lyrics continue to deliver warnings to ‘writers and critics’ that they are
facing their last chance, and to ‘senators and congressmen’ that if
they continue to obstruct and to ‘stall’ they will get hurt. The other
obvious dichotomy in these lyrics is that between who will and who
will not, be saved. The inherent theme, of the dire consequences of
ignoring the word of God, is expressed through metaphors and
imagery which again reflect a fusion of both Old and New Testament
literary conventions.
Dylan’s warnings to writers and critics, just as those to the scribes
and Pharisees so scathingly condemned in Matthew 23,1-29, ‘who
prophesize …’75 to keep their ‘eyes wide’ echoes Mark 13,37 (‘The
Little Apocalypse’), ‘Watch.’76 In it’s context though, it seems to echo
the message of Ezekiel who is instructed by God to:
72 Dylan, op cit, 148. Complete transcript in Annexure 1.
73 Emphasising Dylan’s ‘us’ and ‘them’ perspective.
74 Italicised by the author, J D Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, New York,
1994, 53.
75 The Holy Bible, op cit, New Testament, Matthew 23,1-29, 17.
76 Ibid, New Testament, Mark 13,37, 34.

Living in the End Times: the prophetic language of Bob Dylan
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… prophesy against the prophets of Isreal that prophesy, and say
thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, hear ye the
word of the Lord; thus saith the Lord God; Woe unto the foolish
prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!
(Ezekiel 13:1-3)
The penultimate verse targets ‘mothers and fathers,’ challenging their
authority over their children. The words attributed to God, recorded
by Ezekiel in 18.4 ‘Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father,
so also the soul of the son is mine,’77 and of Jesus in Matthew 23.9
‘And call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father,
which is in heaven,’78 resonate again in the message to ‘mothers and
fathers’ that they hold no authority over their children and who are
also instructed to ‘get out of the new one [road] if you can’t lend your
hand.’ Peace is presumably the cause they would be lending a hand
to, and their sons and daughters are the peacemakers who,
according to The Beatitudes, in Matthew 5.9, ‘shall be called the
children of God.’79
These final warnings precede the notion of inescapability which
characterises the final verse, and summarises the imminent onset of
a pattern of reversals. The reversal of first and last is most obviously
found in Mathew 19,30 ‘But many that are first shall be last.’80 The
lyrics of this song are in fact peppered with the sorts of opposite
polarities or reversals which dominate The Beatitudes: ‘the slow one
now will later be fast;’ ‘the present now will later be past,’ ‘the first one
now will later be last’ and ‘the loser now will be later to win,’ the latter
of which strikes the same chord as the quote from Luke 17,33,
‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life
will preserve it.’81
It is this pattern of reversals which distinguishes the characteristic
features of ‘The Times they are a-Changin’’ from those found in both
prophetic literature and that which is termed apocalyptic. Another
analogue is found in millenarists in the First World who, despite the
77 Ibid, Old Testament, Exekiel 18,4, 490.
78 Ibid, New Testament, Matthew 23,9, 17.
79 Ibid, New Testament, Matthew 5,9, 3.
80 The Holy Bible, op cit, New Testament, Matthew 19,30, 14 as noted in Burris, op cit.
81 The Holy Bible, op cit, New Testament, Luke 17,33, 53.

The Buddha of Suburbia
200
fact that they enjoy a sense of material security, are troubled by an
impression that ‘the world has ‘gone off the rails.’’82 The term
millenarism83 denotes the expectation of ‘a ‘spirit-originated’
intervention to bring about the end of the known order of things, along
with a welcome transformation or great reversal of fortunes for the
oppressed,’84 who hold no hope for the human potential to effect such
changes. The millenarist hopes for ‘powerful, suprahuman acts of
requital and reversal will be enacted – against the insuperable forces
of opposition in the immediate present.’85 Conversely though, the
crucial message in which those predictions of reversals are
embedded in the final verse of ‘The Times they are A-Changin’’ is
actually that of irreversibility. It is now too late to appeal for
redemption as the ‘line’ is ‘drawn’ and the ‘curse’ is ‘cast’. Similarly,
the lyrics of the song ‘When the Ship Comes In’86 in which Dylan
again uses water and flood metaphors, offer no opportunity for reform
or remission for the uninitiated:
Then they’ll raise their hands
Sayin’ we’ll meet all your demands,
But we’ll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh’s tribe
They’ll be drownded [sic] in the tide,
And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered.87
Like that account of the ‘Pharaoh’s tribe’ who ‘sank into the bottom as
a stone’ in Exodus 15:5, and the traditional Afro-American Gospel
Song, ‘Oh Mary, Don’t you Weep:’
Moses stood on the Red Sea shore, smiting that water with a two-
by-four Pharoah's army got drownded [sic]. Oh Mary don't you
weep.88
82 G W Trompf, in Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements: Transoceanic Comparisons
of New Religious Movements, edited by G W Trompf, Berlin, 1990, 6.
83 Which incorporates the ‘cognate abstractions … millenarianism, millennialism,
chiliasm, etc’ as defined by Trompf, Ibid, 1.
84 C Loeliger and G Trompf, in New Religious Movements in Melanesia, edited by C
Loeliger and G Trompf, Suva, 1985, xiii.
85 Trompf, op cit, 7.
86 Dylan, op cit, 147-148. Complete transcript annexed.
87 Ibid, 148.
88http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~kristin/songbook/GospelTunes/OhMaryDontYouWeep,
accessed 15 August 2005. With special thanks to Carole Cusack for this reference.

Living in the End Times: the prophetic language of Bob Dylan
201
when the ship comes in the ‘foes’ will be absolutely, irredeemably,
relentlessly and emphatically ‘drownded’ in that cataclysmic ‘end
time.’ ‘Oh Mary, Don’t you Weep’ has been re-recorded by numerous
artists including Sam Cooke in 1964, variously as a protest or
inspirational song bemoaning oppression. Although Dylan recorded
When the Ship Comes In during the previous year, the variation
‘drownded’ pre-existed in the lyrics of previous artists. 89
Dylan’s songs find their way into the repertoire of other singers,
however, those from this early period are linked eternally with the
singer’s own voice. He retrieves and reinvigorates major themes in
Jewish post-exilic prophetic literature, particularly that of expurgation
by water and eschatology. The songs seek out a time when all
disorder and iniquity will come to an end and all will be renewed. Part
of that renewal lays in Dylan’s own search for a new, more socially
central self, a self he eventually believed he found in his conversion
to Christianity in 1978. What was amazing, and possibly surprised
Dylan himself, was the impact these early songs had on western
civilisation in the 1960’s. The lyrics seemed to capture within tight,
concise aphorisms the broader concerns of a whole new generation
of souls who were calling out for their sentiments to be expressed.
Throughout Dylan’s own creative and musical search for self, the
white counter-culture also found themselves engaged in a secular
manner in a relationship between people and prophet; prophecy and
hope, which was founded in ancient scripture. Bob Dylan, Robert
Zimmerman’s reinvention of the prophets of old, reinvented the
relationship between art and religion in the modern secular genre of
popular music.
89 http://musicscout.piranha.de/html/en/tracks/851, accessed 15 August 2005. Special
thank you to Steve Bauducco for sharing his insight; email communication.

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APPENDIX 1
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Released on 13 January 1964 on album entitled
The Times They are A-Changin’
Lyrics reproduced from
Dylan, B. (1974), Bob Dylan: Writings and Drawings, (Panther Books,
St. Albans), 131-132.
Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you’d better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticise
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.