The Philosophical Meaning Behind Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

One of the most common interpretations of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" connects to the Bible, specifically the Old Testament's Isaiah, chapter 21, verses five through nine. And it's true that there's some undeniably similar, if not identical imagery and vocabulary shared between the two. Per Bible Gateway, Isaiah 21: 5 โ€“ 9 in part reads, "Go, set a watchman; let him announce what he sees. When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs, riders on donkeys, riders on camels, let him listen diligently, very diligently." Per Genius, the last verse of "All Along the Watchtower" reads, "All along the watchtower / Princes kept the view," and ending, "Two riders were approaching / The wind began to howl."

Based on even only those passages, Dylan's song sounds like a remixed version of the Bible, or an extension of the Bible's story with some different details. The biblical version describes the watchman keeping an eye out for the fate of Babylon, ending with the lines, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground." Because we in the modern day colloquially use "Babylon" as shorthand for the follies of decadence and idolatry, this is why folks like that on Bob Dylan Song Analysis describe the song as being about societal corruption. In this interpretation, the inclusion of the joker and thief characters โ€” around whom the song revolves โ€” signify two wayward approaches to life: foolishness and greed. 

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