GENERAL NOTE: J. S. Bach is known to have performed the St. John Passion four times in versions that differ textually and musically from each other in varying degrees. Version I (BWV 245.1, 1724) does not survive in complete musical sources, but its text is known with good certainty. Version II (BWV 245.2, 1725) includes several replacement or additional arias, and new interpolations from Matthew’s gospel. Version III (BWV 245.3, c.1730) restored some movements but replaced others with musical numbers now lost. Version IV (BWV 245.5, 1749) restored most of the text and music from Version I, with revised words in several numbers. Between versions III and IV Bach began creating a new score, musically revising the first ten numbers of the passion in 1739. His work was completed around 1749 by an assistant who presumably just copied the readings in Bach’s composing score (without revising). The setting in this partially revised score, which does not represent a version performed under Bach, is now known as BWV 245.4. Most modern performances present a conflated hybrid text based on editions by Arthur Mendel (both in an influential performing score and the critical text of the New Bach Edition) or on similar modern editions that likewise mix Bach’s earlier and revised musical materials while mostly retaining the verbal texts of the earlier versions. A 1728 publication of collected liturgical poetry compiled by Christoph Birkmann includes the libretto from the 1725 version of the St. John Passion; it was presumably based on the now-lost printed booklets that were distributed to Bach’s congregation, but its exact relationship to the work is not certain.

¹ “Niedrigkeit” is somewhat ambiguous. The only passage in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day that uses the word in connection with Jesus is Acts 8:33, “In seiner Niedrigkeit ist sein Gerichte erhaben” (“In his abjection is his judgment taken up”). Later German Bibles typically use the word “Erniedrigung” (“humiliation”) here instead. The underlying Greek word, “tapeinosis,” can mean “low estate” or “humiliation,” or both. Luther’s biblical commentaries indicate that he intended both senses with his use of the word “Niedrigkeit” in Acts 8:33, and “abjection” is probably the best rendering in English to capture this double meaning.

¹ “Niedrigkeit” is somewhat ambiguous. The only passage in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day that uses the word in connection with Jesus is Acts 8:33, “In seiner Niedrigkeit ist sein Gerichte erhaben” (“In his abjection is his judgment taken up”). Later German Bibles typically use the word “Erniedrigung” (“humiliation”) here instead. The underlying Greek word, “tapeinosis,” can mean “low estate” or “humiliation,” or both. Luther’s biblical commentaries indicate that he intended both senses with his use of the word “Niedrigkeit” in Acts 8:33, and “abjection” is probably the best rendering in English to capture this double meaning.

² The 1728 printed libretto here gives “genommen hatte” instead of “hatte genommen”; there is no difference in meaning in this context.

³ The 1728 printed libretto here lacks “zu ihnen” (“to them”).

⁴ In his 1739 score, Bach set this with an extra syllable, “zurücke”; for the 1724, 1725, and 1749 versions, and in the 1728 printed libretto, the text here reads “zurück.” There is no difference in meaning.

⁵ In his 1739 score, Bach revised this with an extra syllable, “fragete” (“asked”). In Bach’s 1724, 1725, and 1749 versions the text here reads “fraget” (“asks”; i.e., in the historical present tense). The 1728 printed libretto here reads “fragte” (“asked”).

⁶ John 18:1-8.

⁷ At Passover, Jerusalem itself was always overcrowded with pilgrims. Where Jesus and the disciples (who were visiting from Galilee) went out to stay overnight was still within the area that, at the time, was considered ritually proper for pilgrims to be during the festival.

⁸ “Schar” is Luther’s rendering of John’s “speira,” a technical term that in the New Testament always refers to a “cohort” of Roman soldiers. Luther’s commentaries on the passion narrative in John make clear that his “die Schar” refers to “the band of Roman soldiers.” This term does not refer to “the Jewish crowd” (indeed, there is no talk of a “crowd” of any sort in John’s passion narrative or in Luther’s rendering of it, nor of a “mob”). Also, neither “speira” nor “Schar” (nor “Knechte,” nor “Kriegsknechte”) refer to “the Jewish troops,” a textually unwarranted interpretation sometimes encountered in modern commentary on Bach’s St. John Passion. The author of the Gospel of John, a writer living under Roman rule, would most unlikely have employed a technical Roman military term, “speira,” to denote a group of Jewish soldiers, had there even been any Jewish soldiers under the Roman occupation of Judea. The “speira” are a group distinguished from the “attendants” of the chief priests and of the Pharisees. That “the soldiers” more generally (Luther, “die Kriegsknechte”) were not Jews is also evident from the fact that “the soldiers” later (in movement 21) mock Jesus inside the hall of judgment—“the Jews,” according to John’s narrative (movement 16), do not go in the hall of judgment so that they would not be ritually defiled.

⁹ Luther’s “Diener” (“attendants”) does not mean “officers,” a rendering sometimes given in modern translations of the St. John Passion. Also, these attendants are not part of “die Schar” (“the band/cohort”). The “band,” or “cohort” (not “crowd”), consists of “Kriegsknechte” (“[Roman] soldiers”).

¹⁰ Luther Bibles of Bach’s day use “die Hohepriester” (plural) to refer to the rotation of priests who worked in the Jerusalem Temple, and “der Hohepriester” (singular) to the head priest of them all. Partly to avoid potential narrative confusion, it became conventional in English translations of the Bible to call the former “the chief priests” and the latter “the high priest.” The original Greek of the New Testament text gives “hoi archiereis” (literally, “the chief priests”) and “ho archiereus” (literally, “the chief priest”).

¹¹ Pharisees were a Jewish movement that cultivated and promoted oral Torah. After 70 C.E., rabbis who followed Pharisee attitudes toward oral religious law are believed to have been central to the Judaism known to the canonical Gospel writers. These writers tend to give a similar prominence to the Pharisees in their stories about Jesus, sometimes for polemic reasons, sometimes by presumably unintended anachronism. Some recent historical research contends that there was no substantial conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees: Jesus was executed by the Romans, and if Jews did have anything to do with the crucifixion, it would have been at the instigation of those who had access to Pilate, principally the leaders of the priesthood. Other research argues that there was actually some serious opposition to Jesus from the Pharisees.

¹² Historical present tense (that is, “he comes” rather than “he came”) in John and Luther. John’s narrative mixes the two tenses, perhaps to give a sense of dramatic immediacy; so does Luther’s translation, but not exactly as in John’s text.

¹³ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

¹⁴ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹⁵ Literally, “I am it” (as opposed to “It is me,” or “I am he”).

¹⁶ The Greek “ego eimi” (“I am”), in the voice of a divine figure, is understood as an expression of self-revelation in the New Testament and in the Septuagint (the ancient Jewish Greek translation of the Torah and, eventually, the entire Hebrew Bible, with some additional Greek texts). Because Jesus’s “Ich bins” (“It/That, ‘I am’”) here is a divine utterance (a theophany), all those in his presence fall involuntarily to the ground.

¹⁷ Past tense, however, in John and Luther.

¹⁸ A stanza of “Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen?”

¹⁹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Auf das erfüllet würde, welches er sagte” (“So that what he [had] said would be fulfilled”).

²⁰ John 18:9-11.

²¹ Jesus’s words in John 17:12, understood as the “word/Word of God”; in John 1:1, Jesus is called “das Wort bei Gott” (“the word/Word with God”; and Colossians 3:16 speaks of “das Wort Christi” (“the word/Word of Christ”).

²² Luther Bibles of Bach’s day use “die Hohepriester” (plural) to refer to the rotation of priests who work in the Jerusalem Temple, and “der Hohepriester” (singular) to the head priest of them all. Partly to avoid potential narrative confusion, it became conventional in English translations of the Bible to call the former “the chief priests” and the latter “the high priest.” The original Greek of the New Testament text gives “hoi archiereis” (literally, “the chief priests”) and “ho archiereus” (literally, “the chief priest”).

²³ In biblical language, “the cup” is a metaphor for what God has to offer a person, whether positive (e.g., “the cup of consolation”) or negative (e.g., “the cup of wrath,” and “the cup of suffering”).

²⁴ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “allen” (i.e., “all” as plural instead of as a singular).

²⁵ A stanza of “Vater unser im Himmelreich.”

²⁶ “Wehren” is used here in one of its older-German senses, of “verhindern” (“get in the way of,” “restrain”) or “verbieten” (“to forbid”).

²⁷ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “der den’n [i.e., ‘denen’] Jüden riet” (“who advised those Jews”).

²⁸ John 18:12-14.

²⁹ The word “umbracht” here is a standard older-German alternative version of “umgebracht,” the past tense of “umbringen” (“to bring down” in its sense of “to kill/murder”). It is not the past tense of “umbrechen” (“to plow up [a field]” or “to break up/down,” which might be theologically conceived, here, as a metaphor for the breaking up of bread, “the [physical] body of Christ,” in the Lutheran sacrament of communion). Here in John 18:14 and elsewhere, the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day employ “umbracht” as the past tense of “umbringen.”

³⁰ The expression “für das Volk” (“for the people”) here is ambiguous (as is also true of the underlying Greek words “hyper tou laou”): it can mean “instead of the people” or “on behalf of the people,” and this double meaning was apparently intended. See also John 11:50, where Caiaphas had said, “Es ist uns besser, ein Mensch sterbe für das Volk, denn dass das ganze Volk verderbe” (“It is better for us [Jews that] one person may die for the people, than that the entire people may be destroyed [by the Romans]”).

³¹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Mich vom Stricke meiner Sünden zu entbinden” (“To unbind me from the snare of my sins”).

³² The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Von der Laster Eiterbeulen mich zu heilen” (“To heal me of purulent vice-boils”).

³³ The notion of a “Sündenstrick” (“sin’s snare”) was derived from Proverbs 5:22, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “Die Missetat des Gottlosen wird ihn fahen, und er wird mit dem Strick seiner Sünde gehalten werden” (“The godless one’s misdeed will entrap him, and he will be held [fast] with the snare of his sin”). This “Sündenstrick” was also associated with the “Teufelsstrick” (“devil’s snare”) of 2 Timothy 2:26.

³⁴ “Lasterbeulen” are “vice-boils,” not “blasphemy-boils” (which would have been “Lästerbeulen”).

³⁵ John 18:15a.

³⁶ This is an allusion to Genesis 32:26, the story of Jacob’s wrestling with God at Peniel. God says to Jacob, “Lass mich gehen” (“Let me go”), and Jacob answers, “Ich lasse dich nicht [gehen], du segnest mich denn” (“I will not let you [go], unless you bless me”). According to Luther’s radically Christocentric reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, it was actually Christ himself whom Jacob wrestled with at Peniel.

³⁷ The biblical metaphor of the life of faith as a race course (in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, “Lauf”) is set forth most clearly in 2 Timothy 4:7 and 1 Corinthians 9:24.

³⁸ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Bist du nicht auch dieses Menschen Jünger einer?” (“Are you not also one of this person’s disciples?”).

³⁹ The 1728 printed libretto lacks this sentence.

⁴⁰ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Jesus antwortete ihnen” (“Jesus answered them [i.e., the high priest and the attendants and servants]”).

⁴¹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads not “im Verborgnen” but “in Verborgen”; there is no difference in meaning.

⁴² The 1728 printed libretto here lacks the word “aber” (“but”).

⁴³ John 18:15b-23.

⁴⁴ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

⁴⁵ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

⁴⁶ “Die Knechte” are not “the soldiers” (as this is sometimes rendered in modern translations of the libretto), but “the servants” of the Jewish chief priests and high priest.

⁴⁷ As is the case at several other spots in the libretto, the old form “für” appears where modern German would use “vor.” (The libretto’s usage of “vor” and “für” is not consistent.)

⁴⁸ “Schule” here does not really mean “school,” as it is sometime rendered in modern translation of the libretto. The Luther Bibles of Bach’s day used as various renderings of the New Testament Greek’s “sunagoge” (“synagogue”) the words “Schule,” “Jüden-Schule,” and “Jüden-Schul.”

⁴⁹ Jesus is quoting God’s words from Isaiah 45:18-19, “Denn so spricht der HERR: … Ich bin der HERR, und ist keiner mehr; ich habe nicht in verborgene geredet (“For so declares the LORD: … I am the LORD and there is no other; I have not spoken in secret”).

⁵⁰ “Backenstreich” (literally, a “strike of [i.e., to] the cheek”) was an older-German, loftier synonym for the more common expressions “Ohrfeige” (“slap in the face”; literally, “smack of the ear”) and “Maulschelle” (“box on the ear”; literally, “swat of the muzzle”). Consider also Luther’s rendering of Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says “so dir jemand einen Streich gibt auf deinen rechten Backen, dem biete den anderen auch dar” (“if someone gives you a blow to your right cheek, offer him the other [cheek] also”).

⁵¹ Two stanzas of “O Welt, sieh hier dein Leben.”

⁵² The most general sense of the word “Plage” in older German was given in the leading eighteenth-century German dictionary as “Ein Schlag, ein Streich, … und figürlich auch die dadurch verursachte Wunde” (“A blow, a stroke, … and figuratively also the wound caused by it.”). In older English the word “plague” could likewise mean “a blow, a smiting.” Psalm 89:33, in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, reads “so will ich ihre Sünde mit der Rute heimsuchen und ihre Missetat mit Plagen” (“Then will I visit their sin with the rod, and their misdeed with strokes/wounds”). The last word of the sentence renders the plural of the Hebrew “nega,” which means variously “stroke,” “plague,” “wound,” “mark,” “plague-spot,” “wound-mark.”

⁵³ Literally, “Of misdeeds know you not.” This line is not saying that Jesus was unaware of the existence of misdeeds or sin. The sense of the line derives from 2 Corinthians 5:21, “er hat den, der von keiner Sünde wusste, für uns zur Sünde gemacht” (“he [God] has made into sin for us him [Jesus] who knew of no sin [i.e., who had no personal experience of committing a sin]”). See also the text of line 2 in movement 15.

⁵⁴ “Das betrübte Marterheer” in this line does not mean “the miserable band of torturers”; in the older-German word “Marterheer,” the “Heer” was understood as metaphorical, which makes the sense of “das betrübte Marterheer” to be “the grievous host of torments.”

⁵⁵ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Simon Petrus aber stund und wärmete sich” (“But Simon Peter stood and warmed himself”).

⁵⁶ The 1728 printed libretto identifies this as a “Chor der Juden” (“Chorus of Jews”).

⁵⁷ Although the narrative had just identified the person here as a “Knecht” (“servant”), the 1728 printed libretto identifies the speaker as “Diener” (“attendant”). It was earlier an attendant who gives Jesus a blow to the cheek, and it is now a servant who questions him.

⁵⁸ John 18:24-27.

⁵⁹ Matthew 26:75a and 26:75c, except for the word “gedachte,” which is taken from Luther’s rendering of the parallel passage in Mark 14:72b.

⁶⁰ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

⁶¹ This sentence was interpolated from Matthew 26:75. Peter is here remembering the words of Jesus in John 13:38 (Matthew 26:34).

⁶² The import of this line is derived from Hebrews 5:13-14, “Wem man noch Milch geben muss, der ist unerfahren in dem Wort der Gerechtigkeit, denn er ist ein junges Kind; den Vollkommenen aber gehört starke Speise, die durch Gewohnheit haben geübte Sinnen zum Unterscheid des Guten und des Bösen” (“Whomever one must still give ‘milk’ [as sole diet], that man is inexperienced in the word of righteousness, for he is [like] an infant; but ‘solid food’ belongs to the perfected, who by custom have [their] senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil”). The whole person, what the King James Bible calls the “heart and mind” (Luther Bibles, “Herz und Sinn”), is affected, but the present double response (movements 13 and 14) specifically emphasizes the “conscience” [Luther Bibles, “Gewissen”]—see especially the concluding line of movement 14: “Rühre mein Gewissen” (“Stir my conscience”).

⁶³ “Restore” here is used in the sense of “restored to a proper sense of good and evil.” Lutherans would have considered any restoration to come from Jesus, a principle reflected in Matthew 11:28, where Jesus says, “Kommet her zu mir, alle, die ihr mühselig und beladen seid, ich will euch erquicken” (“Come here, to me, all you who are travailed and weighed down; I will restore you”).

⁶⁴ This line does not mean “[Do I wish to have the] mountains and hills [be] behind me?” The line’s sense is derived from Luke 23:26-31, where Jesus says to the Daughters of Jerusalem, who are among the great number of the people lamenting his crucifixion, that the time is coming when it will be said to the mountains (Luther Bibles, “zu den Bergen”), “fall on us,” and to the hills (Luther Bibles, “zu den Hügeln”), “cover us.”

⁶⁵ In older German the adverb “bitterlich” (“bitterly”) was sometimes spelled “bitterlichen.”

⁶⁶ A stanza of “Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod.”

⁶⁷ This refers to the “Heiland-Blick” (“gaze of the Savior”) frequently cited in Lutheran sermons on the passion narrative. As explained, e.g., in Heinrich Müller’s passion sermons, several of which Bach himself owned, it is the warmth of Jesus’s metaphoric gaze that melts the ice of Peter’s heart into tears of repentance. This also was believed to help make sense of the references in the passion narrative to Peter’s continually trying to warm himself.

⁶⁸ The first stanza of this hymn.

⁶⁹ “Godless people” here refers to the Romans (the soldiers and Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea) in the hall of judgment to which Jesus is now being led. See movement 16 that follows. The stanzas of this well-known chorale move in sequence through the events of the passion narrative, and the stanza immediately following this one likewise concerns Jesus before Pilate.

⁷⁰ That is, the passion narrative of John 18:1–19:42, but referring also to elements of the passion narratives of Luke 22:39–23:46, Mark 14:26–15:47, and Matthew 26:30–27:66.

⁷¹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “richtet ihn nach euren Gesetze” (“judge him according to your [own] laws”).

⁷² John 18:28-36.

⁷³ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

⁷⁴ There are laws from the Hebrew Scriptures that can be cited for this (e.g., Numbers 9–11), but the text may simply be projecting theological irony against “the Jews.” Passages from the Mishnah concerning ritual impurity from exposure to rooms (like the hall of judgment) built over a burial place are also sometimes cited.

⁷⁵ Luther’s use of “Oster” (“Easter”) here is apparently meant to distance the observance of this festival by Jesus and his followers as much as possible from the Jewishness of Passover. Luther and Lutheranism equivocated on whether the word “Oster” referred to the (Christian) festival of “Easter” or to the (Jewish) festival of “Passover,” with the latter also understood as prefiguring the former. Luther used both “Oster” and “Passah” for “Passover” in his translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, but he used only “Oster” in his New Testament. It may have been for its lack of Jewish associations that Luther chose the non-biblical word “Oster,” derived from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, “Eostre” or “Ostara.” In older German, “Passah” was even defined as “das judische Osterfest” (“the Jewish Easter festival”); and in English, Passover has sometimes been referred to as “Jewish Easter.”

⁷⁶ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

⁷⁷ “Töten” here has the specific meaning of “to put to death, as capital punishment,” not just “to kill.” At least as Christian scriptural tradition had it, it was the case under the legal conditions of Roman rule that capital punishment was mostly not permitted on the part of Jews or any non-Romans. There were a few charges for which Jews evidently were permitted to carry out death sentences, but by stoning, not crucifixion: for violating prohibitions against circulating in certain quarters of the Temple, and possibly for adultery. But current biblical scholarship supports the prohibition’s historicity for the specific charges against Jesus depicted in the Gospel, namely, being an evil-doer, making himself out to be divine, and making himself “the King of the Jews.”

⁷⁸ That is, what Jesus said (understood as the “word/Word of God”) in John 12:32-33 (suggesting that he would die by crucifixion, the Roman method of execution); in John 1:1, Jesus is called “the word/Word of God.”

⁷⁹ Anyone claiming kingship without Roman authority would have been considered an insurrectionist.

⁸⁰ “Darob” is an older-German synonym for “deshalb” (“on these grounds,” “for this reason”) and “darum” (in the sense of “for this reason,” “on that account”).

⁸¹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “solche Treu” (“such faithfulness”).

⁸² The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Keins Menschen Herz vermag es auszudenken, was dir zu schenken” (“No human heart is able to conceive of it, what [is fit] to give you”).

⁸³ Two stanzas of “Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen?”

⁸⁴ This “the work”—which is in the singular, not plural (“works” would imply human actions, and Lutherans would have found abhorrent any hint that people’s good works might earn them favor in God’s eyes and thus eternal salvation)—presumably means “the work of the Lord” (i.e., the cultivation and furtherance of the Christian faith) that is spoken of in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Meine lieben Brüder, seid feste, unbeweglich, und nehmet immer zu in dem Werk des HERRN” (“My dear brothers [in Christ],” be steadfast, immovable [in your faith], and always grow/increase in the work of the LORD”).

⁸⁵ The 1728 printed libretto here reads, as in Luther’s rendering of John 18:39, “Ihr habt aber eine Gewohnheit, dass ich euch einen auf Ostern losgebe” (“But you have a custom that at [Jewish] Easter [i.e., at Passover] I release someone to you”). Bach’s St. John Passion text does not include the words “auf Ostern” here in any version.

⁸⁶ John 18:37-40, 19:1.

⁸⁷ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

⁸⁸ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

⁸⁹ “Barabbas,” a name unknown in Jewish usage, means “son of the father.”

⁹⁰ The underlying term in Greek can mean “robber” or “revolutionary,” but the Luther Bibles render it as “murderer.”

⁹¹ With regard to Jesus’s scourging, Luther called Pilate (said in Luther’s translation to have carried out the act himself) “ein rechter Bluthund” (“a proper bloodhound”).

⁹² “Rute … blühn” (“rods … are blossoming”) is an allusion to what German writers of Bach’s day called “Die blühende Ruthe Aaronis” (“The Blossoming Rod of Aaron”), which was depicted in Numbers 17:1-11. For ancient cultures, such miraculous rods were said to identify their owners as a legitimate hero or priest. In Numbers 17:10, God commands Moses to place “den Stecken Aaron” (“Aaron’s staff/walking-stick”) in the sanctuary. And in the New Testament, in Hebrews 9:4, it says that in the Holy of Holies of the sanctuary, the contents of Ark of the Covenant had included “die Rute Aarons, die gegrünet hatte” (“the rod of Aaron, which had grown verdant [with budding leaves]”). In Christian interpretation the budding rod of Aaron was regarded as a foreshadowing of Jesus’s miraculous birth and of his miraculous resurrection.

⁹³ In German folk medicine “Isop” (“hyssop”) was a healing plant, a pilewort perennial, a “Gnadenkraut” (literally, “herb of grace”).

⁹⁴ “Satzten” is an older-German spelling for “setzten (“to set”).

⁹⁵ Although the narrative had just identified the group here as the (Jewish) chief priests and the (Jewish) attendants, the heading in the 1728 printed libretto identifies more broadly those who are singing this utterance as “[Das] Volk,” by which would be meant the Jewish people in general. (In German, “the people” in general, Jews and gentiles together, would much more likely be called “die Leute,” not “das Volk.”) See also the “gottlose Leut” (“Godless people”) in line 5 of movement 15.

⁹⁶ The narrative had just identified the group here as “die Jüden” (“the Jews”), and the heading in the 1728 printed libretto identifies this utterance as sung by “[Das] Volk,” evidently (and accurately) equating “das Volk” with “die Jüden.”

⁹⁷ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Redest du nicht mit mir, und weissest du nicht” (“Will you not speak with me, and do you not know”).

⁹⁸ John 19:2-12a.

⁹⁹ That is, the soldiers who formed the “Schar,” first mentioned in movement 2. “Kriegsknecht” was defined in the leading eighteenth-century German dictionary as “eine nunmehr veraltete Benennung eines gemeinen Soldaten, welche noch häufig in der Deutschen Bibel vorkommt” (“a now archaic designation for a common soldier, which yet frequently is found in the [orthographically but not verbally updated] German Bible [of Luther, still in current use in the eighteenth century]”). The number of soldiers is indefinite here in John’s narrative; in the parallel gospel passages, Mark 15:16 and Matthew 27:27, the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day speak of “die ganze Schar” of “Kriegsknechte” (“the entire cohort/band” of [technically, 600] “soldiers”).

¹⁰⁰ “Backenstreich” (literally, a “strike of [i.e., to] the cheek”) was an older-German, loftier synonym for the more common expressions “Ohrfeige” (“slap in the face”; literally, “smack of the ear”) and “Maulschelle” (“box on the ear”; literally, “swat of the muzzle”). Consider also Luther’s rendering of Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says “so dir jemand einen Streich gibt auf deinen rechten Backen, dem biete den anderen auch dar” (“if someone gives you a blow to your right cheek, offer him the other [cheek] also”).

¹⁰¹ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

¹⁰² The location (outside the hall of judgment) makes it clear that this “them” refers to the Jews (see movement 16), not to the Roman soldiers (who are inside the hall of judgment).

¹⁰³ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

¹⁰⁴ The precise import of this line, and of its underlying Greek text, is much contested. The Greek source text reads “kai legei autois, idou ho anthropos” (literally, “And [he] says/declares to them: ‘Behold the person/man!’”). Strictly grammatically speaking, the “he” in the text who utters these words appears to be Jesus, not Pilate. In this (unlikely) reading one might understand the gospel to depict Jesus’s declaring of Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and the Jews: “See what humankind is like!” But the speaker was most likely meant to be taken as Pilate, and the simplest and most likely construal is that he was declaring of Jesus: “Look at this poor fellow.” Very often, however, “Behold the man” is interpreted theologically, Pilate’s having (unwittingly) declared: “Behold the Man [of Sorrows]” (i.e., applying the language of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 to Jesus), or “Behold the [Son of] Man.” Luther’s translation, “Sehet [i.e., in the imperative plural], welch ein Mensch!” (literally, “Look, what a person/man!”) was taken in Lutheranism to mean “Look, what a great man this is!” This reading strongly emphasizes a specific theological message—the glory of Jesus’s ignoble situation—to the exclusion of others. Many modern German Bibles still give Luther’s rendering, whereas others read, in a more direct rendering, “Siehe [i.e., in the imperative singular], der Mensch!” (“Look, the person/man!”). Some modern translations of the St. John Passion libretto, whether intentionally or unintentionally, sidestep the linguistic and interpretive challenges of Luther’s German text by providing a direct rendering of the Greek text, “Behold the man!”

¹⁰⁵ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

¹⁰⁶ This reflects mockery on Pilate’s part, as he should know that the chief priests and attendants are not permitted to put Jesus to death on the charges brought against him. The leaders evidently understand Pilate not to be serious, for they continue pressing him for Jesus’s death.

¹⁰⁷ In the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, blasphemy is cited as a capital offense in Leviticus 24:16 (the meaning of whose Hebrew text is critically contested), “Welcher des HERRN Namen lästert, der soll des Todes sterben” (“Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD, [it is] of death [that] he [this person] shall die”). In John 10:30 (the meaning of whose Greek text is critically contested) Jesus evidently makes himself out to be equal to God (the father), declaring “Ich und der Vater sind eins” (“I and [God] the father are one [i.e., in divine essence and in eternal nature, according to the contemporary Lutheran understanding of this verse]”), and in 10:33 “the Jews” are depicted as taking Jesus’s declaration to be blasphemy (i.e., against the majesty of the “one God” or “LORD alone” proclaimed in Deuteronomy 6:4).

¹⁰⁸ Luther believed Pilate was afraid not that Jesus might be “the son” of the “one God” proclaimed by Jews, but rather that he was a potentially troublesome son of the pagan gods.

¹⁰⁹ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹¹⁰ Historical present tense in John but not Luther.

¹¹¹ That is, Pilate is to be considered sinful as well. Luther’s commentary states that Jesus does not excuse Pilate but shows Pilate’s own guilt. The “greater sin” presumably lies either with Caiaphas, who, technically, has turned him over to Pilate, or with Jesus’s disciple Judas. In fact, Luther suggests that the singular “der” (“the one”) may here be taken as a plural. The libretto of Bach’s St. John Passion further extends the levels of guilt to subsequent Christians (see especially movements 11 and 37).

¹¹² An aria text (i.e., not a hymn stanza), probably by Christian Heinrich Postel, that Bach set to the melody of the hymn “Machs mit mir, Gott, nach deiner Güt” in a typical simple harmonization. In Bach’s own St. John Passion materials, this movement is, nonetheless, headed “Choral” (“hymn”). In the 1728 printing of the libretto, this movement is headed “Choral. / Mel[odie]. Machs mit mir Gott nach deiner Güte. etc.” (“Hymn. Melody. Machs mit mir Gott nach deiner Güte. etc.”), and the text is given there in the boldface type reserved for hymns.

¹¹³ “Gefängnis” is employed here not in its modern-German sense of “prison” but in its original, older-German sense as a synonym for “Gefangenschaft” (“imprisonment”); it is often used this way in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day (e.g., Esra 1:11, Psalm 126:4). The state of being imprisoned (“Gefängnis”) is here contrasted with the state of being free (“Freiheit”); in the next lines the place where one is imprisoned (“Kerker”) is contrasted with the place where one is free (“Freistatt”).

¹¹⁴ “Must” here in the sense of “it has to be this way” (i.e., because it is God’s will), not “it is intrinsically required to be this way.” Lutheran theologians would presumably have balked at reading these lines as saying “Jesus, by dint of your imprisonment, God is ‘required’ to grant us freedom.”

¹¹⁵ “Satzte sich” is an older-German spelling for “setzte sich (“set/sat/installed himself”).

¹¹⁶ The 1728 printed libretto, reflecting the Greek text of John, here reads “überantwortete er ihn ihnen” (“handed him over to them [antecedent: ‘the chief priests’]”). The shorter text, i.e., without the words “to them,” in Bach’s setting (and which was the standard reading in Luther Bibles of Bach’s day and earlier, even though Luther’s particular source text, the 1519 edition of the New Testament by Erasmus, did contain the longer text, in both Greek and Latin) readily allows for the (proper) understanding that Pilate turned Jesus over for the act of being crucified not to Jews but to Roman soldiers, the “they” who lead Jesus away (see also the “they” in movement 25); thus the text Bach set, without the phrase “to them,” does not suggest that it was “the Jews” who crucified Jesus.

¹¹⁷ John 19:12b-17.

¹¹⁸ Some Bibles understand John’s Greek to mean “and Jesus sat on the judgment seat,” thus picturing Jesus mocked by Pilate as a judge or king. Luther, however, clearly read the Greek to mean that Pilate was on the judgment seat: Luther Bibles employ the reflexive “Pilatus … satzte sich” (“Pilate ‘set himself’ [or, ‘installed himself’; or simply, ‘sat’]), and Luther stressed that Pilate went there to make sure his judgment was completely open and in public.

¹¹⁹ The name is actually Aramaic, not Hebrew.

¹²⁰ That is, the day when the Passover lambs were slaughtered in the Temple.

¹²¹ By “Oster” (“Easter”) here, Luther’s translation relies on an understanding of “Passah” (Passover) as “das judische Osterfest” (“the Jewish Easter festival”), what was called in the English tradition, “Jewish Easter.” Thus the text can refer to “Easter” before the events of the Christian Easter have taken place.

¹²² The “sixth hour” is at noon.

¹²³ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹²⁴ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹²⁵ Listeners are presumably to understand the chief priests as saying “we have no Jewish king right now.” Jews had not been led to expect a messiah who acted like Jesus of Nazareth; in Jesus’s day, Jews had no human king of their own, and it would have been part and parcel of a chief priest’s framework of belief to hold that his only divine king was the one Almighty God, not a human/divine person associated or equated with God.

¹²⁶ “Golgotha” is actually closer to the Aramaic than the Hebrew equivalent.

¹²⁷ The poetry of this aria does not contain the egregiously anti-Jewish remarks found in its well-known source, the so-called Brockes-Passion, a leading eighteenth-century poetic rendering by Barthold Heinrich Brockes both of the passion narrative and meditations on it. The second line in Brockes is concerned not, as in Bach’s St. John Passion, with Christians leaving inner spiritual turmoil for the peace of the cross, but with Jews “leaving Achshaph’s dens of murder.” Achshaph (sometimes confused, in modern commentary on Brockes, with “Asaph,” a musician in the First Jerusalem Temple) was one of the many cities the Israelites, under Joshua, are depicted as having destroyed in their battles to take over the promised land of Canaan. “Leaving none that breathed” (Joshua 11:11), the Israelites burned Canaan’s cities to the ground, except for those that stood on Canaan’s hills (11:12-13). Brockes’s apparent moral: “Old Israel” should leave its murderous depths behind and fly to the hilltop of Calvary.

¹²⁸ “Fliehen” would ordinarily mean “to flee,” and that rendering could reasonably work here, but more likely the word’s older-German alternate sense as a synonym for “fliegen” (“to fly”) is what was intended. The sense “to fly” places the emphasis on the end point, whereas the sense “to flee” places the emphasis on the starting point.

¹²⁹ In older German, “allda” was an intensified form of “da” in its sense of identifying a location.

¹³⁰ “Satzte” is an older-German spelling of “setzte” (“set”).

¹³¹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “antwortete” (“answered”).

¹³² John 19:18-22.

¹³³ According to Luther, this “they” refers to the Roman soldiers. He notes that Pilate had not even commanded that Jesus should be crucified along with the two “murderers” but that the soldiers did this as a service to the malicious chief priests. See also the comment concerning the “they” in movement 27.

¹³⁴ “Er gesaget habe” (rather than “gesagt hat” or “gesagt hätte”) is not perfect subjunctive but oblique expression (reported speech; old form).

¹³⁵ The chief priests may have wished the many Jews visiting Jerusalem for Passover to see from the superscription that Jesus was dangerous to “the people” both politically (“king”—claiming power when in a province under Roman rule) and religiously (“I am”—in what is called its “absolute usage,” claiming divinity). Bibles that Bach owned do link Pilate’s superscription with the “I am” material in John 18:37 and 18:5.

¹³⁶ Historical present tense in Luther but not John.

¹³⁷ A stanza of “Valet will ich dir geben.”

¹³⁸ “Zeit und Stunde” (literally, “time and hour”) was a common expression in older German, serving as the equivalent of the English expression “times and seasons” (e.g., Milton, Paradise Regained, “He [God] in whose hand all times and seasons roul”). The two nouns were meant to cover the senses of “quantitative time” (in Greek, “chronos”) and “qualititative time” (“kairos”).

¹³⁹ The word “milde” in this context most likely means not “calmly” or “gently” but “copiously,” or “abundantly,” or “generously” (in older German, “milde” was often used as a synonym for “freigebig”). The word “milde” is apparently used in this same older-German sense in the aria “Können Tränen meiner Wangen” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Compare also Psalm 37:21, as rendered in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, “Der Gottlose borget und bezahlet nicht; der Gerechte aber ist barmherzig und milde” (“The Godless one borrows and [re]pays not; the righteous one, however, is merciful and generous” [the underlying Hebrew, literally: “shows mercy and gives [generously]”).

¹⁴⁰ The use of the reflexive rather than simple indicative with the verb “bluten” (“bleed”) is presumably meant to emphasize that Jesus actively bled on the cross, to give of himself—his bleeding was not passive, merely the inevitable result of his violent treatment.

¹⁴¹ “Gewürken” (or “gewürcken”) is an older-German spelling of “gewirken” (“to knit,” “to weave”).

¹⁴² Although the narrative had just identified the group here as “die Kriegsknechte” (“the [Roman] soldiers”), the 1728 printed libretto inexplicably identifies the speakers of this line as “Juden” (“[The] Jews”). That “the soldiers” were not Jews is also evident from the fact that “the soldiers” later (in movement 21) mock Jesus inside the hall of judgment—“the Jews,” according to John’s narrative (movement 16), do not go in the hall of judgment so that they would not be ritually defiled.

¹⁴³ John 19:23-27a.

¹⁴⁴ Psalm 22:19 in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day.

¹⁴⁵ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹⁴⁶ Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹⁴⁷ A stanza of “Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod.”

¹⁴⁸ “Richtigkeit machen” (literally, “to make correctness”) was an older-German expression that meant not “make [for] righteousness” but “to put things straight (especially, e.g., to pay a debt).” This language was famously employed in Luther’s rendering of Matthew 3:3, “Er ist der, von dem der Prophet Jesaias gesagt hat und gesprochen: Es ist eine Stimme eines Predigers in der Wüsten: Bereitet dem HERRN den Weg und macht richtig seine Steige!” (“He [Jesus] is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah has said, declaring: ‘It is a voice of a preacher in the wilderness: “Prepare the way for the Lord and make his paths straight”’”).

¹⁴⁹ This hymn line would readily have called to mind the consolations of Psalm 42:12 (repeated in 43:5), “Was betrübst du dich, meine Seele, und bist so unruhig in mir? Harre auf Gott; denn ich werde ihm noch danken, dass er meines Angesichtes Hilfe und mein Gott ist” (“Why do you sadden yourself, my soul, and why are you so restless within me? Wait for God; for I will yet thank him, because he is the help/salvation of my countenance, and my God”).

¹⁵⁰ John 19:27b-30a.

¹⁵¹ The passages that Lutheran theologians most often mentioned for this were Psalm 22, Psalm 42, or Job 15:16.

¹⁵² Historical present tense in John and Luther.

¹⁵³ That is, “Mich dürstet [es]” (literally, “it thirsts me”; or “it is thirsting me”), an archaic impersonal expression for “Ich dürste” (“I thirst”; or, “I am thirsty”). Older English employed, as a corresponding impersonal expression, “me thirsteth” (“[it] thirsts me”), not unlike the now old-fashioned or regional impersonal verb “methinks” (“it seems to me”).

¹⁵⁴ “Es ist vollbracht” is often rendered in English as “It is finished.” But Luther’s German is more emphatic than this, suggesting the stronger rendering “It is accomplished”; the declaration “Es ist vollbracht” connotes not simply “It [the earthly mission of Jesus] has been brought to its conclusion” but, more forcefully, “It has been brought to its fullness.”

¹⁵⁵ As is the case at several other spots in the libretto, the old form “vor” appears where today’s German would use “für.”

¹⁵⁶ The adjective “gekränkt” is apparently being used here in its older-German sense of “geschwächt” (“weakened”; or, “debilitated”).

¹⁵⁷ The name “Held aus Juda” (“hero out of [the lineage of] Judah”) was a title given to Jesus in German Lutheran theology and hymnody, based on the belief that Jesus as God’s messiah was prophesied as a “hero” (Luther’s idiosyncratic rendering of the Hebrew word “shiloh”) in Genesis 49:10, a passage the meanings of whose Hebrew text is now unknown and much contested, and which in the German of the Luther Bibles in Bach’s day reads “Es wird das Scepter von Juda nicht entwendet werden … bis dass der Held komme [or, in some Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, instead of the subjunctive, the indicative: ‘kommt’]” (“The scepter will not be taken away from [the lineage of] Judah … until the [peace-instituting] hero come [or: ‘comes’]”).

¹⁵⁸ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Und er neiget” (“And he bowed”).

¹⁵⁹ John 19:30b.

¹⁶⁰ The 1728 printed libretto here reads not “vom Sterben frei” (“free from death”; literally, “free from the death”) but “von Sterben frei” (“free from dying”).

¹⁶¹ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Kann ich durch deine Pein und Sterben nunmehr das Himmelreich ererben?” (“Can I through your pain and death now inherit the kingdom of heaven?”).

¹⁶² An older-German spelling of “versöhnt” (“reconciles”).

¹⁶³ A stanza of “Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod.”

¹⁶⁴ This phrase is sometimes rendered not as “nailed to the cross” but as “slain on the cross” or “stricken on the cross.” Those renderings would, however, have required the dative “am [i.e., ‘an dem’] Kreuz” (“on the cross”) instead of (the accusative) “ans [i.e., ‘an das’] Kreuz” (“to the cross”). The accusative form of the phrase is employed in Luther’s rendering of Colossians 2:13-14, “Er hat uns geschenkt alle Sünde und ausgetilgt die Handschrift, … und hat sie … an das Kreuz geheftet” (“He [God/Jesus] has remitted us all sin and blotted out the promissory note and affixed it to the cross [where it is deluged with the redeeming blood of Jesus]”).

¹⁶⁵ The full sense of these lines is derived from Revelation 1:17-18, “Ich bin der Erste und der Letzte, und der Lebendige; ich war tot, und siehe, ich bin lebendig von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit” (“I [the ‘one like a son of man,’ the resurrected Jesus] am the first [because from me come all things] and the last [because to me come all things], and the living one; I was dead, and look, I am alive [without end,] from eternity to eternity”).

¹⁶⁶ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “zerreiss” (“splits apart”; i.e., historical present tense).

¹⁶⁷ In the 1728 printed libretto, the phrase “Und die Erde erbebete” (“And the earth quaked”) does not appear.

¹⁶⁸ The 1728 printed libretto here reads not “Felsen zerrissen” (“rocks [did] split apart”; i.e., past tense) but “Felsen zerreissen” (“rocks [do] split apart”; i.e., in historical present tense).

¹⁶⁹ Matthew 27:51-52b.

¹⁷⁰ A Bible owned by Bach explains that this happened in order to indicate that Jesus, as God’s high priest, would enter the Temple’s Holy of Holies with his own blood and earn for his followers an everlasting redemption (i.e., and thus the Temple sacrifices would no longer be necessary).

¹⁷¹ “Von oben an bis unten aus” (hyperliterally, “from above in until below out”) was a rare expression in Luther’s day and also in Bach’s day (likewise “von obenan bis untenaus”). The standard expression was simply “von oben bis unten” (“from top to bottom,” which would be a more direct translation of the Greek in Matthew). By rendering not only with the “oben” versus “unten” but additionally with the “an” versus “aus,” Luther apparently meant to intensify and emphasize strongly the very thoroughness of the temple veil’s being torn apart (“top-to-bottom,” “in-and-out [i.e., ‘out-and-out’]”).

¹⁷² There are many examples in the Hebrew Scriptures of the earth shaking as a sign of divine judgment of God’s people or of the last times.

¹⁷³ In the Calov Bible (a book owned by Bach), the seventeenth-century Lutheran theologian Abraham Calov says that the rocks were split apart as a sign of Godly wrath against the Jews. The Olearius Bible (also owned by Bach) provides similar commentary.

¹⁷⁴ Using language from Ezekiel 37:12.

¹⁷⁵ Lutheranism held that the true church of God had been established before the fall of Adam and Eve into sin and, further, that all messianic promises in the Hebrew Scriptures refer to Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, living by faith in God’s promises, the saintly Israelites of the Hebrew Scriptures (but not later Jews) were considered to be part of the true church, “die Heiligen” (“the saints”), and could rise at this moment.

¹⁷⁶ The German conjunction “indem” corresponds to the English conjunction “while” (i.e., “during the time that”) (“as/while”). In modern editions of the St. John Passion the German is sometimes given as two words, “Mein Herz, in dem die ganze Welt,” and this line is sometimes read as the preposition “in” (English, “in”) with the dative pronoun “dem” (“whom”), yielding the probably misconstrued sense “My heart, ‘in whom/which’ the entire world.” In some eighteenth-century manuscript sources for Bach’s St. John Passion, the wording is indeed given as two words, but in older German, the conjunction “indem” was routinely spelled as either one word or as two. For example, in the Calov Bible, John 4:51 reads “Und in dem er hinab ging, begegneten ihm seine Knechte, …und sprachen: ‘Dein Kind lebt’” (“And during the time that he [a royal official, whose son was deathly ill] was going down [from Cana, where Jesus was; home to Capernaum, where his son was], his servants met him … and said: ‘Your child lives’”); the Olearius Bible here gives not “in dem” but “indem.” In the 1728 printing of the St. John Passion libretto, this expression is given in movement 34 unambiguously as one word, “indem.”

¹⁷⁷ In John 1, Jesus is called “the Word [of God] made flesh,” “the Word” through whom “all things were made/created.”

¹⁷⁸ In older German, “erkalten” (“to wax cold”) was sometimes used as a synonym for “sterben” (“to die”); here its use also accommodates a rhyme with “spalten” (here, “to break asunder”). The concern in this poem, apparently, is not that they “see” the body of Jesus getting colder before or after his dying, or both, but that they see him die.

¹⁷⁹ “Deines Ortes” (literally, “of your place”) is an older-German synonym for “deinerseits (“for your part”). The sense of this line is not “What will you, my heart, do in the geographical/metaphorical place/spot where you are at present?” but “What will you, my heart, do for your part in all this mourning and shattering?”

¹⁸⁰ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “der es gesehen hat” (“he who has seen it”).

¹⁸¹ John 19:31-37.

¹⁸² That is, the day when the Passover lambs were slaughtered in the Temple.

¹⁸³ In the biblical narrative of the institution of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:1-29), it is said regarding the first day of the festival, in Luther’s rendering (of 12:16a), “Der Tag soll heilig sein” (“The day shall be holy/solemn”). The original text of John 19:31 calls the sabbath day of its passion narrative a “great/solemn” day, and Luther ratchets this up to a “very/highly great/solemn” day. The supposition was that this particular sabbath was an especially great, solemn, and holy day because it was a sabbath that fell on the same day as the beginning of the festival. (There is, however, no known pre-John attestation of “great/holy/solemn” being employed to designate a sabbath that is also a festival day.)

¹⁸⁴ That is, to hasten their deaths.

¹⁸⁵ Luther (like many others) noted that blood and water cannot flow from dead bodies and, seeing forgiveness of sin written all over the narrated event, suggested (as did many others) that this was a miracle, pointing to the sacrament of communion and to the sacrament of baptism in the name of Jesus.

¹⁸⁶ Here, “Ihr sollet” is not subjunctive but an old-fashioned spelling, employed frequently in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, of the indicative conjugation that is otherwise spelled “Ihr sollt” (“you [plural] shall”). The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Ihr sollt.”

¹⁸⁷ The scripture passage is Exodus 12:46, “Ihr sollt kein Bein an ihm zerbrechen” (“You all shall break apart no bone in it [‘the lamb’ selected for the Passover meal, as specified in 12:3]”), which means that John was citing Passover lamb imagery—note that in older German, “Passah” (“Passover”) was defined as “das judische Osterfest” (“the Jewish Easter festival”), and in English, “Passover” was sometimes referred to as “Jewish Easter.” The commentary in Bach’s Bibles here at John 19:37 thus also cite 1 Corinthians 5:7, “Denn wir haben auch ein Osterlamm, das ist Christus, für uns geopfert” (“For we also have an Easter lamb; this is Christ, sacrificed for us”). Luther comments on the passage in John: “Er hat sollen das rechte Osterlamm sein, welches man ganz essen sollte” (“He has to be the proper Easter lamb, which should be eaten whole”). The libretto’s “ihm” should be read as a neuter, not masculine, dative pronoun, referring to Jesus as the lamb rather than to Jesus by name.

¹⁸⁸ The citation in John does not correspond exactly to the received Hebrew text or to the most common Septuagint reading of Zechariah 12:10.

¹⁸⁹ A stanza of “Christus, der uns selig macht.”

¹⁹⁰ Reflecting biblical usage, “Untugend” is apparently used here to refer to violation of divine law. It was Luther’s rendering of one of the corresponding senses of the term “adikia,” defined as “sin against God,” as it is used in the New Testament, e.g., in 1 John 1:9, “So wir aber unsere Sünde bekennen, so ist er treu und gerecht, dass er uns die Sünde vergibt und reiniget uns von aller Untugend” (“But if we confess our sin, then he [God] is faithful and just, so that he forgives us the sin and purifies us of all iniquity”). Sin against God is what this hymn stanza is pointing to in its next line: “Deinen Tod und sein Ursach fruchtbarlich bedenken” (“[May we] consider your [Jesus’s] death and the reason for it [namely, to atone for humanity’s sin]”).

¹⁹¹ Grammatically, the adjectives “arm und schwach” (“poor and weak”) could modify either the “Dankopfer” (“thank-offerings”) of line 8 or the “wir” (“we”) of line 3. But semantically it seems more likely for these particular adjectives to apply to people than to offerings. For example, the adjectives “arm” or “arm und elend” (“poor and wretched”) are frequently applied to people in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day but never to offerings, and Sirach 11:12, in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, speaks specifically of “Mancher, der ist schwach und arm” (“Many a [person] who is weak and poor”).

¹⁹² Biblically, a “thank-offering” was a particular kind of “peace-offering,” i.e., a literal sacrifice on the altar, offered to God, in ancient Israel. Lutheranism used the term “Dankopfer” figuratively for Christian prayers and songs of thanksgiving, but the idiosyncratic rendering of Sirach 35:4 in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day is presumably also relevant here: “Wer Barmherzigkeit übet, das ist das rechte Dankopfer” (“Whoever practices mercy, this is the proper thank-offering”).

¹⁹³ The 1728 printed libretto here reads not “der ein Jünger Jesu war” (“who was a disciple of Jesus”) but “der ein Jünger war” (“who was a disciple”).

¹⁹⁴ The 1728 printed libretto here reads “Und Pilatus erlaubet es” (“And Pilate allows it”; i.e., in historical present tense).

¹⁹⁵ John 19:38-42.

¹⁹⁶ Some Bible lexicons of Bach’s day give “der Löwe wird sterben” (“the lion will die”) as the meaning of the name “Arimathia”; and the Olearius Bible (which Bach owned) noted in its commentary on Mark 15:43, “Leo mortuus Domino, vel lux mortis Domini” (“‘the lion dead unto the Lord,’ or ‘the light-of-the-Lord’s death’”). Revelation 5:5 speaks of God’s messiah as “the lion from the tribe of Judah.”

¹⁹⁷ John 9:22, “denn die Juden hatten sich schon vereinigt, so jemand ihn für Christum bekennte, dass derselbige in den Bann getan würde” (“for the Jews had already agreed, if anyone acknowledged himself for [Jesus as] Christ, that this person would be put under the ban”); and 16:2, “Sie werden euch in den Bann tun; es kömmt aber die Zeit, dass, wer euch tötet, wird meinen, er tue Gott einen Dienst daran” (“They [the Jews] will place you [followers of Jesus] under the ban; but the time is coming that whoever [of the Jews] kills you will suppose he thereby does God a service”). Bach set the latter passage, verbatim, in his church cantata “Sie werden euch in den Bann tun” BWV 44.

¹⁹⁸ This sentence did not appear in the first two versions of the St. John Passion; it was apparently not regularly printed in the main text of Luther Bibles before the late 1720s. (It does not appear in the 1728 printed libretto.)

¹⁹⁹ With echoes from the Hebrew Scriptures (Jeremiah 34:5; 2 Chronicles 16:14), the Gospel is describing an honorable burial for a regal figure, culminating the triumph of Jesus’s glorifying crucifixion.

²⁰⁰ “Bei,” here, is a synonym for “circa” (“about”).

²⁰¹ Whether or not this “hundred pounds” is to be taken literally, and whether the units of measure underlying the word “pounds” specifies a heavy weight of precious spices or a high value in coinage for (a lighter amount) of these precious spices, this was in any event a superabundant quantity of myrrh and aloes, which seems to be the main point. Large numbers are used in John elsewhere as well, apparently to suggest messianic plentitude.

²⁰² “Heilige Gebeine” does not mean “relics” (i.e., in this case, any physical remains of a deceased holy/saintly person), a concept that would have been (unfavorably) associated with the Roman Catholic church.

²⁰³ That is, “opens [the gates of] heaven unto me and closes [the gates of] hell.”

²⁰⁴ A stanza of “Herzlich Lieb hab ich dich, o Herr.”

²⁰⁵ The phrase “dein lieb Engelein” is more likely a poetically clipped version of the plural “deine lieben Engelein” than of the singular “dein liebes Engelein.” In Luke 16:19-31, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, it says (at verse 22) that “der Arme starb und ward getragen von den Engeln in Abrahams Schoss” (“the pauper [Lazarus] died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom”).

²⁰⁶ Western Christianity came to use “Abraham’s bosom” as a designation for heaven.

²⁰⁷ The grave of the righteous person is spoken of as a “Kammer” (“chamber”) in Luther’s rendering of Isaiah 57:2, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “die richtig für sich gewandelt haben, kommen zum Frieden und ruhen in ihren Kammern” (“[those] who have properly walked forward [in the ways of Lord] come [through their death] to peace, and [they] rest in their chambers”). On this verse, the Calov Bible (which Bach owned) comments: “dass sie in ihren Gräbern ausruhen, als in ihren Schlafkämmerlein, bis der Zorn für übergehe, Es.XXVI.20, da sie werden aus ihren Gräbern auferwecket werden, und eingehen zum ewigen Leben, Dan.XII.1, Joh.V.29” (“that they take rest in their graves, as in their little sleeping chambers, until the wrath [of God] passes, Isaiah 26:20, when they will be resurrected from their graves, and enter into eternal life, Daniel 12:1, John 5:29”).

²⁰⁸ The equivalent of the English expression “to die peaceably” was “Sanft in dem Herrn einschlafen” (literally, “gently/peaceably in the Lord to fall asleep”).

²⁰⁹ “Der Jüngste Tag” (literally, “the youngest day”; i.e., “youngest” as “latest”) is Luther’s rendering of “the last day,” which is the term employed in the Gospel of John for the day of the divine judging of all persons at the end time. In the Gospel of Matthew this occasion is called “the day of judgment,” a term rendered by Luther as “das Jüngste Gericht” (literally, “the youngest judgment”).

²¹⁰ “Alsdenn” is an older spelling of “alsdann” (“thereupon”), a synonym for “sodann” (“thereafter”).

²¹¹ “Erhören” was an intensified form of “hören” (“to hear”), used in requests to royalty and in prayers to God. This heightened form is also employed, however, in other contexts; e.g., in John 9:32, “Von der Welt an ists nicht erhöret, dass jemand einem geborenen Blinden die Augen aufgetan habe” (“From [the creation of] the world on, it is absolutely not [to have been] heard [of] that anyone will have opened the eyes of a man born blind”).