Bob Dylan & The Bible

Bob Dylan recently won the Nobel Prize for literature. This award is given to artists who showcase a profound meaning in their writings. I’m no songwriter, but I like to pick the brain of the songwriters here in Nashville because I find their work intriguing. Often songwriters will tell me that songwriting is a form of poetry. The artist is trying to express an inner meaning in their narrative. As I did a little research on Bob Dylan, I became intrigued by his work. Father Robert Barron once wrote that Dylan’s work is drenched in Biblical imagery. Dylan grew up in an orthodox Jewish family. So, in those crucial forming years of his youth, Dylan was in an environment of Biblical knowledge. In his adult years, Dylan seemed to separate himself from of organized religion, but was very much guided by a sense of the Divine in his writings. While Dylan may not come across as devout or holy by any means, he certainly respects the Bible and has many times used the stories in the Bible in his literature. In fact, Dylan mentioned in an article in Rolling Stone that John Wesley Harding was his “first Biblical rock album.”

If Dylan – a man revered in the pop culture used Biblical imagery in his writings, then his work can be a bridge in which to introduce Biblical themes to those typically not interested in anything religious.

However, Dylan’s Biblical themes are not overly front and center and they tend to be layered underneath other themes. Like most poets, he hides the deep meaning of his writings in a subtle way in which he makes the audience hunt for it. Dylan is not going to tell you what his songs mean. He wants his work to be somewhat elusive, so he keeps the audience at bay with a cloud of mystery as to the true meaning of his writings. However, in Dylan you can see patterns. Every great artist will leave echoes of themes implanted in their work. If we know that throughout Dylan’s career he used Biblical motifs, we can begin to see a pattern emerge. Perhaps, the most famous of Dylan’s song contains a deep running Biblical theme. In his song Blowing in the Wind, Dylan asks the elementary questions in the following verses:

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?”

Throughout the song, he’s asking such deep questions as - Who am I? What’s life about? When will there be peace? And then comes his famous answer. “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.”

With this answer, the audience kind of assumes Dylan is giving them a vague, abstract answer – the wind. What does this wind mean? Is it blowing by me? Past me? We think the wind is allusive and it’s blowing away from me. Ahh, but when you read it through Biblical lens, the profound meaning of the song makes sense. In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is always associated with wind. In John 3, Jesus told Nicodemus “to be born of water and spirit.” Nicodemus had no clue what this meant. So, Jesus went on to connect that this Spirit is associated with wind (see John 3:8).

The Hebrew word for the Spirit of God is ruach - which means wind, breath, and spirit. Genesis 1 describes how "the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the ruach (wind/spirit) of God was hovering over the waters." So, the wind is, in fact, the Holy Spirit. Wind was meant to mean the breath of God and from this breath comes creation. Also in Exodus 14:21, it was a strong driving wind that separated the waters of the Red Sea and leads the Israelites to freedom. Dylan hints that the deepest answer to our most fundamental questions of who am I is not found in politics, or through our efforts. The answer is in the Holy Spirit – the 3^rd person of God. So, to know the meaningful questions in life, you’ll find the answer in the very entity that created you - God.

Another deep Biblical work is Tangled Up In Blue. This writing seems to be about two people – a man and a woman, who have a lot of baggage and despair in their lives. The line of tangled up in blue can be interpreted as a metaphor in which they are chained up in their sin. Then, in the middle of the song Dylan writes,

“Then she opened up a book of poems and handed it to me - written by an Italian poet from the fifteenth century. And every one of them words rang true. And glowed like burning coal. Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.”

Who was this Italian poet from the 15^th century? It was none other than the great Catholic writer Dante Alighieri. And the poetry Dylan is talking about is Dante’s famous work in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Indeed, Tangled Up in Blue mirrors the work of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Here, Dante illustrates his journey from the dark depths of sin, to the mountain peak in which the human person is free from the chains of sin and can now fly. In Dylan’s mind, this same free-ness comes when a person breaks away from being tangled up in blue (sin).

Dylan’s Biblical themes continue in his song, Gotta Serve Somebody, a 1979 number that won Dylan a Grammy for best song. It is based on a passage from the 24th chapter of the book of Joshua. After the Israelites had completed their conquest of the Promised Land, Joshua assembled the people and posed to them a blunt choice: either you worship the Lord or you worship the gods of the people you have conquered. Then he says, unambiguously, “…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24: 16). Dylan translates this into his distinctive poetry:

“You might be the ambassador to England or France. You might like to gamble, you might like to dance. You might be the heavyweight champion of the world. You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. It might be the devil, or it might be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

There it is, as stark as Joshua’s challenge: either the true God or the dark power that lies behind the treasures of this world. We are all guided by some entity on how to act, how to think, and how the behave. In this song, Dylan might as well be asking people what teacher are you going to follow – the pop culture or God?

The Biblical themes keep rolling along in his song Gonna Change My Way of Thinkin’. The next to last stanza of this tune is: “Jesus said be ready, you know not the hour which I come. He said, ‘He who is not for me is against me’. Just so you’d know where he was comin’ from.”

Even Dylan’s explicitly political protest songs were rooted in the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel and almost without exception called the judgment of God on wicked rulers and unscrupulous financiers. What was that “hard rain a-gonna fall” if not the flood of Noah? Also, in The Wicked Messenger Dylan takes a line directly from Proverbs 13:7: "a wicked messenger falleth into mischief.”

His song Highway 61 Revisited is a Jewish retelling of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 -“Oh, God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son!’ Abe says, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

Dylan's Every Grain of Sand is littered with classic Christian assumptions of a flawed man brought to realization of his past sins. Dylan connects the sins of mankind by the famous episode of Cain and Able in Genesis 4 as he writes, "Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break. In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand." The reference that he "can see the masters hand in every leaf that trembles" illuminates the idea of cause and effect in judgement someday coming to man. Further in the song, Dylan showcases how temptation is always calling man's name and that "every hair is numbered like every grain of sand." This line is reminiscent of Jesus statement: "The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Luke 12:7). Also, given the sparrow reference in Luke's verse, it's interesting that Dylan concludes his song by saying, "I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man. Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand." Here, Dylan is most likely bringing the Luke verse out in his song to indicate that he is testing this verse to see if man's fate is more than that of the sparrow.

In Forever Young, Dylan poetically rewrites a father’s blessing over his children at the Sabbath table in the several "may you" lines. These lines are invoking the blessings Isaac gave to Jacob in Genesis 27, and similarly Jacob's dream of a ladder leading up to heaven as Dylan writes -“May you build a ladder to the stars. And climb on every rung.” And of course, Dylan connects the blessings in the Old Testament with the famous blessings Jesus delivers when Dylan writes in the song, "may you always do for others and let others do for you." (see Matthew 7:12).

Another of Dylan’s songs, Like A Rolling Stone, sounds on the surface like the narrator is blaming or putting down this other fellow.

“Once upon a time you dressed so fine. You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? People'd call, say, ‘Beware doll, you're bound to fall.’ You thought they were all kiddin' you. You used to laugh about everybody that was hangin' out. Now you don't talk so loud. Now you don't seem so proud. About having to be scrounging for your next meal.”

So, it seems like he is putting down someone who was doing great, but now finds himself in a lowly state. However, if we apply the Biblical theme displayed throughout Dylan’s work, this song begins to make sense. He’s not so much pointing what this person has lost, he’s pointing out what this person has gained, precisely because she’s lost all this stuff. This can be summed up in Jesus mantra “when you lose yourself, you find yourself” (see Matthew 10:39). What the saints point out is that the key to the spiritual life is detachment of all the things of this world. Notice in the song that Dylan was pointing out that this person lost all these pleasures of the modern culture.

What the saints declare is that when a person fills his egos up with pleasure, materialistic possessions, money, power, status, he’ll get off the trial of his true self. If we become addicted to the pleasures of the world, we’ll lose our real selves and replace it with a fake, consumerism self. In short, the human person is hardwired for God, but instead, we replace God with all this “stuff” in the world. This naturally creates a void in the person. However, once we detach ourselves from this “stuff” of the world, we become free and can begin to be the real version of ourselves. And sometimes, when life strips this stuff away from you, it is all for the better. Indeed, St. Francis of Assisi became a saint once he left his rich lifestyle and embraced complete detachment from this world. Now when you are stripped away from the junk of the world, God’s seeds can better grow within you. We can see this in Dylan’s next verse:

“How does it feel - To be without a home? Like a complete unknown. Like a rolling stone.”

This line is not so much a downing that person, it’s a freeing of that person. Freeing of that out of the detachments of the world and into a closer life towards God. How does it feel now that you a stripped of all that junk and superficiality? One of the great lines of that song is “when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Once you are stripped down you are free, and now you are like a rolling stone. A rolling stone is able to move; able to live. And finally, a rolling stone is powerful. This song can be interpreted as a person receiving the voice of God. His life has been rocked around, but it is now liberated and he is free to be his real, powerful self. Indeed, Dylan called this song about a journey home. Well, one can understand that the true self devoid from the "stuff" of this world, is when a person reaches their real home.

Another of Bob Dylan’s songs that is drenched in Biblical themes is All Along The Watchtower. It’s been covered by numerous artists. When I was younger, I frequented many Dave Matthews concerts in which Dave would often close with this song. I knew it was a popular song, but I had no idea what the song was about until recently. The imagery in this song comes right out of the 21st chapter of the prophet Isaiah when a watchman on the watchtower sees two riders approaching. Before Bob Dylan brings the watchtower scene together, he starts with a conversation between a joker and a thief. The joker speaks first and says,

"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief.
"There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

Here, the joker and the thief represent two people that are caught in this fallen desolate world. No escape, no way out, we’re caught. They have lived the life of suffering. The confusion the joker mentions indicates that they’ve been pulled in many directions from all the various world views that tell them how to escape their desolation. Their lands have been plowed and stolen by all the conquering armies of the world. Indeed, in Biblical times Israel’s land had been conquered by Egypt, Persia, Babylon, Greece, and Rome.

Also, the space the joker and the thief are in can represent the modern world now. As in ancient times, people are still hopeless and spiritually vapid. Today, there is much hardship and confusion about which worldview to follow. Then, the thief speaks back to the joker. And the thief has encouraging words for the joker.

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke.
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate.
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

Here, the thief is telling the joker to calm down so as to bring him to peace. He’s also relating to the joker that yes, we’ve been through a lot and while it might seem that life is a joke, but there is more to life than this. The reference to “you and I we’ve been through that” shows that the thief has fully experienced what the joker has experienced – suffering in a fallen world. He then encourages the joker by indicating this world of suffering won’t be our fate. The thief then brings up a common biblical line “the hour is getting late.” The hour is getting late can be seen as a reference to God’s presence – God’s breaking into this fallen world. In other words, the thief instructs the joker. because the hour is getting late, we shouldn’t fool around with this idea that life is meaningless.

When we look at this conversation between the joker and the thief, we naturally ask who the thief is in the Biblical mind. We think of the good thief on the cross next to Jesus. Indeed, the good thief on the cross had been through the despair of life. As some have speculated the conversation between the thief and the joker is the conversation between the good thief and the bad thief on the cross in Luke 23. In this reading, the joker represents the bad thief, precisely because the joker is falsely declaring that there is nothing beyond the despair of this life; there is no sense of the Divine. Indeed, the bad thief, by denying Jesus, is expressing this very statement. In Luke’s description, the good thief is talking to the bad thief trying to convince him, no don’t give up, don’t despair there is a Divine presence; in fact, God is right next to you being crucified himself.

Then, the next verse Dylan presumably shifts to Isaiah 21-22 as the watchers are on the watchtower keeping watch. In Isaiah, two riders were approaching, and the wind begins to howl. These two riders are two messengers, and they have a message to announce. Their message to Jerusalem is that Babylon has fallen. Babylon, the great evil empire of dysfunction and sin, has been destroyed. Therefore, how this reads is that the old world of sin and destruction has passed away. So, the thief was right when he told the joker – no, the old world will be defeated and better things will come. This idea only makes sense, as the thief announces to the joker this precisely through the Biblical lens of the resurrection. The cross signifies that yes, the old world of hopelessness, death of your soul (sin) and the idea that suffering being meaningless is now over.

When you combine the Isaiah scene with Luke’s scene, an interesting convergence seems to take place. Here, it is interesting to contemplate about Dylan’s song, is that on the watchtower sits all of humanity. As we sit on the watchtower, how do we view the cross of Jesus? You either look at the cross from the vantage point of the good thief or the vantage point of the joker (bad thief). The thief says, “Yes, I’m flawed, and life is full of hardships. But, there is more to life than this and the time has come where the old world of evil will be defeated.” Or, you look at life as the joker. “Life is hard and meaningless. There is no divine and we were just put her by a product of a random act. As this is true life is just a cruel joke.”

Whereas the thief says, don’t give me this talk about hopelessness and despair, because the thief, just like in Luke’s Gospel, sees the power of the cross. The joker, on the other hand, is a joker – because he views life as a meaningless cruel joke. The joker in his cynical nature does not see the power of the cross. I can’t read Dylan’s mind and, like a good artist, he only gives his audience clues about his writings. But, if we add up the Biblical themes scattered throughout his writings, we can make a conclusion that, in fact, Dylan wants us to be the thief – and not the joker.

Bob Dylan is a poetic genius, but I would emphasize that you have to read him through a spiritual lens. We can also notice that Dylan is not approaching the Bible as some overly pious, holy man. He’s approaching the Bible as a real person who acknowledges his flaws, acknowledges his bruises, but ultimately knows that the deeper meaning in life comes from God.

Today, literary song writing is largely devoid of God. Instead of Biblical motifs, we hear the same old water-downed gruel in pop music emphasizing themes of sex, money, and power. Let us turn to the classics like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Don McLean, Pete Seeger, U2, and others, where we can at least hear an echo of the Biblical message.