Songfacts®:

• According to Johnny Cash, "The Man Comes Around" is loosely based on the Book Of Revelation in the bible, which makes "the man" in the song God, coming around at the apocalypse to vanquish the Devil. He wrote in the album's liner notes: "'Revelation' by its mere interpretation says that something 'is revealed.' I wish it were. The more I dug into the book the more I came to realize why it's such a puzzle, even to many Theologians. Eventually I shuffled my papers, so to speak, drew out four or five pages, and wrote my lyrics."
• This is the title track to Johnny Cash's 2002 album American IV: The Man Comes Around, the last one released during his lifetime - he died the following year. The album is the fourth in a series produced by Rick Rubin that had Cash performing with just the bare essentials, usually just his voice and guitar. He and Rubin picked the songs, and many were covers, most famously the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt," which also appears on American IV: The Man Comes Around.
  
  Cash was a huge star in the '60s and '70s but fell out of favor in the '80s. By the '90s, he had no record label and was playing small venues like the Rhythm Café in Santa Ana, California, which is where Rubin saw him in 1993. Rubin made his pitch and Cash gave it a try. That first album, American Recordings, was released in 1994 and went over very well with fans, critics and Cash. They ended up making six albums together, the last two released after Cash died in 2003.
• The idea for the song came from a dream where Cash was in Buckingham Palace and Queen Elizabeth II said to him, "Johnny Cash, you're just like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." The dream didn't come out of nowhere: He was in Nottingham, England, and had bought a book about people who dream about the Queen, which is pretty common.
  
  Cash decided that the dream was biblical, and found the reference in the Book of Job 38: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me." He grew this into a song, pulling ideas from the Book Of Revelation.
• The song has been used many times on different TV shows and films including the opening and closing credits of both the 2003 movie The Hunted and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.
• Cash started working on this song a few years before recording of the album, going through one revision after another before reaching the finish line. He said he spent more time on the song than any other he wrote.
• The song is bookended by spoken passages that reference the Four Beasts Of Revelation. An alternative earlier take can be heard on the album The Legend of Johnny Cash that omits the spoken sections.
• There are a number of Biblical references in the lyrics. The spoken word intro that opens both the song and the album is taken from Revelation 6: 1-2, which describes John The Apostle's vision of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each heralded by one of the "four beasts" first mentioned in Revelation 4:6–9. We then hear several other Revelation references as Cash sings of how the "Man" (God) will one day come to pass judgment.
  
  The song also alludes to the Parable of the Ten Virgins from the Gospel of Matthew (25:1–13) with the lyrics "The virgins are all trimming their wicks," a reference to the virgins getting ready for the Second Coming of Christ.