I didn’t think this would be a big deal, but with Dylan, the first thing to remember is that everything’s a big deal. On Sunday I posted that YouTube video of Bob performing Tangled Up In Blue in 1978. In it, he replaces the line from the original about the “book of poems” to a line about the Bible. These are the words he sings, with context given here for the controversial lines:

She lit a burner on the stove
Wearin’ a dress made out of stars and stripes
Thought you’d never say hello she said
You know you look like you could be the silent type

Then she opened up the Bible
And she started quoting it to me
Jeremiah, chapters thirteen
Verses twenty-one and thirty-three

And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pourin’ off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
From me to you
Tangled up in blue

So, Jeremiah, Chapter 13, verse 21 goes like this (RSV):

What will you say when they set as head over you those whom you yourself have taught to be friends to you? Will not pangs take hold of you, like those of a woman in travail?

Meditate on that for as long as you wish, to try and figure out what Bob’s trying to tell us by referring to that verse. Then meditate on this (as a number of readers have kindly informed me since Sunday): There is no Jeremiah, chapter 13, verse 33!

What is Bob trying to say by referring to a non-existent verse of Scripture? The implications could be pretty frightening.

But calm down: In the versions of Tangled Up In Blue that Bob performed in the latter part of 1978, he varies the chapters and verses to which he refers (but I’m not going to give you chapter and verse on that — go download them). This indicates that he was improvising to some extent on these lines. I think, back then, he might have figured that he was pretty safe; that no one in the audience likely had a Bible handy to check up on him, and that his buddy Al Gore had not yet invented the internet to instantly send this stuff to millions of people around the world. I think, in other words, that he was just grabbing something that rhymed. One might presume that the reference to that tough old prophet “Jeremiah” was reasonably purposeful, but the chapter and verse was not. “Three” rhymes with “me.” “Thirty-three” is even more elegant an echo of “it to me”, isn’t it?

So — I can’t help but think that it’s kind of funny that someone who can quote so precisely from a random 1961 edition of TIME magazine can get the Bible so wrong like this — but it just goes to show you never can tell.

…

There ain’t no verse 33, and there ain’t no sanity clause either.

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