GENERAL NOTE: This text draws on one of the oldest Lutheran chorales, a paraphrase and expansion of Psalm 130 that appeared in the 1524 Erfurt Enchiridion. The hymn’s first and last stanzas are presented intact as the first and last movements of the cantata, and the inner movements paraphrase the inner stanzas.

¹ “Erhören” carries the sense of “to hear” in its special sense of “to listen to with compliance or assent,” often employed in situations of acceding to or granting of a request or prayer.

² The uncommon separable verb “herneigen” (“to incline here”) is employed, e.g., in Isaiah 55:3, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “Neiget eure Ohren her, und kommt her zu mir” (“Incline your ears here [to me], and come here to me”). There is, however, no significant difference in meaning between “herneigen” and “neigen.”

³ Curiously, most modern English renderings of the libretto here read in the singular. But in this hymn, “dein gnädig Ohr” is plural—a poetically clipped version of “deine gnädigen Ohren” (“your gracious ears”)—as is evident from the “sie” in the next line, which has to be read as the plural “them.” That is, the “sie” as a singular would have required the gender of its antecedent noun to be feminine. But the gender of the antecedent noun here is neuter, “das Ohr.” And if the apposite unclipped phrase were “dein gnädiges Ohr,” line 4 would have to read “Und meiner Bitt es öffne” (“And open it to [hear] my plea”).

⁴ “Unrecht” was used as a synonym for “Ungerechtigkeit” (“injustice”); but it was also often used in the Luther Bibles in the sense of “Abweichung von Gottes Gebot” (“deviating from God’s commandment”), namely when the Greek source texts employed the term “anomia” (“lawlessness”); e.g., in 1 John 3:4, “Wer Sünde tut, der tut auch Unrecht, und die Sünde ist das Unrecht” (“Whoever commits sin, he commits lawlessness also, and sin is lawlessness”).

⁵ Some modern editions give “bei” (“with,” or “for,” or “in”) here where Bach’s original surviving materials give “zu” (“to”).

⁶ In older German, the expression “wo nicht” was a synonym for “wenn nicht” (“unless,” or “if not”).

⁷ Some modern editions give the singular “in dem Leiden” (literally, “in the suffering”) here where Bach’s original surviving materials give “in den Leiden” (literally, “in the sufferings”).

⁸ Grammatically, “Sein Wort fehlet nicht” could have the sense of “His [i.e., God’s] word is not absent” or “His word does not absent itself,” but the expression was a very common one in German Lutheran discourse, where it was employed in the sense of “His [i.e., God’s] word does not fail [or, ‘err’].”

⁹ Some modern editions give “Auf seichtem Grunde” (“Upon shallow ground”) here where Bach’s original surviving materials give “Auf feuchtem Grunde” (“Upon soggy ground”).

¹⁰ “Mein Herz erweichen” does not mean “weaken my heart.” This line concerns not a “weak” versus a “strong” heart, but a “soft/tender” versus a “hard” heart; see fn. 11 below.

¹¹ There are many instances in the New Testament of Jesus doing “signs and wonders” (Luther Bibles, “Zeichen und Wunder”; note the mention of Jesus’s “wonders” in the last line of movement 2, above) that are meant to evoke belief or faith in him. The notion of signs being displayed to “soften the heart” (i.e., to evoke proper belief in the truth of what the speaker performing the signs declares) is derived, e.g., from Exodus 10:1, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “Und der HERR sprach zu Mose: Gehe hinein zu Pharao, denn ich habe sein und seiner Knechte Herz verhärtet, auf dass ich diese meine Zeichen unter ihnen tue, und dass du verkündigest für den Ohren deiner Kinder und deiner Kindes Kinder, was ich in Egypten ausgerichtet habe, und wie ich meine Zeichen unter ihnen beweiset/bewiesen habe, dass ihr wisset: Ich bin der HERR” (“And the LORD declared to Moses: ‘Go in unto Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and [the heart] of his servants, so that I may perform these my signs among them [which will then soften their heart, making clear to them my divine presence and power], and that you may proclaim before the ears of your children, and of your children’s children, what I in Egypt have carried out, and how I have shown my signs among them, that you may know: I am the LORD [God]’”).

¹² “Allmachtshand,” strictly speaking, would mean “hand of omnipotence/almightiness.” Here “Allmachtshand” refers specifically to the “hand of ‘the Almighty’ [i.e., of God],” which more conventionally would be given as “Hand des Allmächtigen” (the scansion of which would not work in this line).

¹³ The sense of this line is typically rendered as “Trust but the hand of the Almighty and the truth of his mouth,” and this is certainly less daft-sounding than a rendering that accommodates more directly what the German text appears to say: “Trust but the hand of the Almighty and the mouth of his truth.” That is, the “der” in “der Allmachtshand” is dative, whereas the “seiner” in “seiner Wahrheit Munde” is feminine genitive, applying to “Wahrheit,” not to (the masculine noun) “Munde.” But the historical sense of this language here is most likely a bit different altogether: with the use of “Hand und Mund” the poet is apparently drawing (a bit clumsily) on the old German legal formula “Versprechen/Schwören mit Mund und Hand” (figuratively, the “pledging of word and deed”; literally, the “promising/swearing with/of mouth and hand”), and so the sense of the cantata line would probably be “Trust but the Almighty’s pledging of deed and his truth’s word.”

¹⁴ In “Auf diese Nacht,” the “auf” is accusative—thus, “Unto this night.” (“In/At/During/After this night” would have required the dative, “Auf dieser Nacht.”)

¹⁵ The sentiment of this line is presumably based on Luther’s rendering of Isaiah 59:1, “Siehe, des HERRN Hand ist nicht zu kurz, dass er nicht helfen könne” (“Look, the [extent of the power of the] hand of the LORD is not too short [for it to be the case] that he may not be able to help/save [us]”).