"The Man Comes Around" is the title track from Johnny Cash's American IV: The Man Comes Around, released in 2002. It was written several years prior to the release of the album; however, Cash updated it for the album. It is one of the last songs Cash wrote before his death.
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
Listen to the words long written down
When the man comes around
…inspired by a bizarre dream he had in which he walked into Buckingham Palace and found Queen Elizabeth sitting on the floor. Taking notice of Cash, Her Majesty pronounced, “Johnny Cash, you’re like a thorn tree in a whirlwind!” “It kept haunting me, this dream,” Cash told Larry King in November 2002, around the time of *American IV’*s release. “I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it’s biblical.” Sure enough, Cash found the [whirlwind and] thorn-tree reference in Job and spun the dream into a song based on the book of Revelation.
The Lord Answering Job out of the Whirlwind - William Blake
