"[2] Andy Gill likens the song to King Lear's soliloquy on the blasted heath in Shakespeare's tragedy: "Wracked with bitterness and regret, its narrator reflects upon promises broken and truths ignored, on how greed has poisoned the well of best intentions, and how even daughters can deny their father's wishes."
"[3] A strong Biblical theme runs through the song, according to Sid Griffin, who also notes that "life is brief" is a recurrent message in the Old Testament books Psalms and Isaiah.
He writes that "in Dylan's singing—an ache from deep in the chest, a voice thick with care in the first recording of the song—the song is from the start a sermon and an elegy, a Kaddish.
"[5] In an interview promoting the release of the complete Basement Tapes, Dylan cited the dropping of China's first hydrogen bomb as an impetus for the song.
[6] Hip hop group Public Enemy reference it in their 2007 Dylan tribute song "Long and Whining Road": "Tears of rage left a friend blowing in the wind / But time is God, been back for ten years, and black again".