These Lyrics From Bob Dylan’s “Born Again” Period Give Off “Positively 4th Street” Vibes

Bob Dylan developed a reputation as an artist who could wield his songwriting pen like a scalpel. If you crossed him or in some way represented something he disliked, he could dissect you with painful precision.

That skill didn’t abandon him when he entered his so-called “Born Again” period. The song “Property Of Jesus” finds him tearing into those who might mock the faithful.

Prime “Property”

Is Shot Of Love, the album released by Dylan in August 1981, the last of his “Born Again” trilogy? Or is it the first album coming out of that period? Honestly, it seems caught somewhere fascinatingly in between.

On the one hand, Dylan certainly skews secular on the romantic laments “Heart Of Mine” and “In The Summertime”. In addition, there’s “Lenny Bruce”, an intriguing tribute to the controversial comic, and “The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar”, a thrilling return to Dylan’s heady lyrical days of the mid-60s.

Then again, closing track “Every Grain Of Sand” touchingly and honestly speaks of the struggles to maintain faith and why that struggle is so worthwhile. Meanwhile, “Property Of Jesus”, which features perhaps the liveliest performance by his backing band on the Shot Of Love album, fires away at non-believers with eloquent fury.

“Property Of Jesus” doesn’t get a lot of attention when people scour the seemingly limitless Dylan catalog. But when you dive into it, you’ll find it as effective an attack on his perceived enemy as more lauded songs of the past, like “Masters Of War” or “Positively 4th Street”.

A Deep Dive into the Lyrics of “Property Of Jesus”

Dylan uses an interesting strategy to get his point across on “Property Of Jesus”. Instead of directly attacking those who scoff at the religious, he encourages them to continue on their mocking path. He sets them against an individual unswerving in his faith. In so doing, he reveals the folly of those he’s addressing.

“Go ahead and talk about him because he makes you doubt,” he dares at the beginning of the song. “Because he has denied himself the things that you can’t live without.” He urges him to continue with their slings and arrows, knowing that they’re only hurting themselves. “He’s the property of Jesus,” he taunts in the chorus. “Resent him to the bone/You got something better/You got a heart of stone.”

He exposes their nastiness: “Hope that he falls upon himself, oh, won’t that be sweet.” “When the whip that’s keeping you in line doesn’t make him jump,” he sneers. “Say he’s hard-of-hearing, say that he’s a chump.” With each of these indiscretions, Dylan suggests that these people are walking further out on the plank.

Dylan contrasts this with the behavior of the man they’re taunting. Every time he praises him with a line like, “Because he don’t increase his worth at someone else’s expense,” he’s also revealing the ill-advised behavior of his opponents. In the final line of the final verse, Dylan asks a question he’s sure these folks won’t be able to properly answer: “What happened to the real you, you’ve been captured but by whom?”

The interesting thing about “Property Of Jesus” is that you could remove the reference to divinity in the chorus, and you’d have a song that’s a secular attack on false friends. In that vein, you could imagine the people he’s addressing hanging out on the fictional 4th Street with some of the other poor souls who stirred up Dylan’s ire.

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