¹ This is the well-known text of Lamentations 1:12, poetry originally expressing grief over what was believed to be God’s destruction of Jerusalem through the Babylonians in the sixth century BCE. The passage is connected in Bach’s cantata also with what was believed to be God’s destruction of Jerusalem through the Romans in the year 70 CE and, apparently, with an expected eternal condemnation of those who are not turned from Christ-rejecting “[Old] Jerusalem” in God’s final judgment at the end-time return of Jesus.

² The “Gottesstadt” here is Jerusalem (see Psalm 87:3), not, for example, Nineveh (at Jonah 3:3, the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day do identify Nineveh as a “city of God”); the biblical quotation of Lamentations 1:12 at the opening chorus concerned the city of Jerusalem. Contrary to what a prominent modern writer on Bach has recently suggested, in this cantata the “you” of movements 2 and 3 and the “me” of movement 1 refer not to “all sinners before God” but to “[Old] Jerusalem.” At movement 4 there is a pronoun shift in the cantata, where it is Christian sinners who are now being addressed—thus when speaking of Christians, the informal plural “you” (“ihr” and “euch”) is employed, not the informal singular “you” (“du,” “dich,” and “dir”) that had been employed for when “Jerusalem” was being addressed.

³ The libretto’s tears are those of the city of Jerusalem, not of others weeping with compassion for the city; see Lamentations 1:2, “Die Stadt weinet des Nachts, dass ihr die Thränen über die Backen laufen” (“The city [Jerusalem] weeps in the night, tears flowing over her face”); see also Lamentations 2:18, and Jeremiah 2:19, “Es ist deiner Bosheit Schuld, dass du so gestäupet wirst” (“It is by the guilt of your wickedness that you are thus flogged”).

⁴ Contrary to what a prominent modern writer on Bach has recently suggested, in this cantata there is indeed—here—an explicit reference to the fate of the Jews. From a surface reading of its German, this recitative might seem to be saying that Old Jerusalem moves from an experience of highest (or “most precious”) favor to an experience of middling or low-level favor, such that these two lines could be translated as “an irreparable loss of the very highest favor.” But the biblically tinged recitative is suggesting, rather, that Old Jerusalem moves from an experience of God’s favor to an experience of God’s disfavor; the lines should be translated as “an irreparable loss of the Most High’s favor.” (“The Most High”—“elyon” in Hebrew, “hupsistos” in Greek—is a biblical term for “God.”) The Calov Commentary Bible, which Bach owned, states in Leviticus 26 (under a section entitled “Punishment of the Recalcitrant”) that “the Jews” as a nation of God’s people were finally destroyed in the first century and “have” to die in misery for over 1600 years, “to the present hour”; in his personal copy of this (seventeenth-century) Bible, Bach rounded this approximate number up by quilling in the number “1700” under Calov’s “1600”; this would hardly indicate disagreement with or indifference to Calov’s commentary. Calov and Bach were both updating Luther’s mantra of “1500 years” (i.e., the approximate length by Luther’s day of the ongoing exile/misery of the Jews, explicitly construed as well-deserved punishment for their rejection of Jesus), a polemical catchphrase reiterated more than twenty-five times in Luther’s famous treatise “Against the Sabbatarians” (1538). It is contextually improbable that Calov’s and Bach’s updatings have simply to do with an interest in numbers, or numerology, per se.

⁵ See Genesis 19:24-28, where God is reported to have completely destroyed this city on account of its wickedness; see also Isaiah 1:9.

⁶ “Verstört” is a biblical synonym for “zerstört” (see especially Daniel 9:26 in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day). The word “zerstört” is printed here in some modern editions of the cantata.

⁷ “Wasserwoge” is a technically redundant form of “Woge” (“billow,” “wave”), employed sometimes for heightening effect (for a “large wave,” “flood-wave”).

⁸ “Eifer” here means not simply “zeal” or “fervor” but, more specifically, “jealousy.” The cantata line takes its language and sense from Deuteronomy 4:24, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “Der HERR, dein Gott, ist ein verzehrend Feuer, und ein eifriger Gott” (“The LORD, your God, is a consuming fire, and a jealous God”). Correspondingly, Exodus 34:14 says “Du sollst keinen andern Gott anbeten; denn der HERR heisst ein Eiferer, darum, dass er ein eifriger Gott ist” (“You shall worship no other god [i.e., this was the first of the Ten Commandments, whose texts are given in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21]; because the [name of the] LORD is called ‘A Jealous One,’ for the reason that he is a jealous God”). This “jealousy” was traditionally understood as analogous to the jealous and impassioned indignation of a marriage partner whose spouse is unfaithful.

⁹ This not a reference to the “rock of Moses” (Exodus 17:6). Nor does it draw, as has been recently suggested, upon Leviticus 26:26, which in the King James Bible reads “I have broken the staff of your bread,” an archaic expression that means “I have cut off the supply of your food” (note, too, that here the Luther Bibles read “will ich euch den Vorrat des Brots verderben” [“I will spoil your supply of bread”]; i.e., without any talk of a “staff” or of “breaking”). The cantata line appears, rather, to include a significant allusion to the wording of Zechariah 11:10 in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, “Und ich nahm meinen Stab Sanft, und zubrach ihn, dass ich aufhübe meinen Bund, den ich mit allen Völckern gemacht hatte” (“And I [God] took my staff [which I had given the name] “Gentle,” and broke it into pieces, that I would annul my covenant that I had made with all of the peoples [of Judah and Israel]”). This narrowly restricted (and idiosyncratic) understanding of God’s covenant with “all of the peoples” as referring to “Judah and Israel” (i.e., to “Old Israel”) is explained as such in Luther’s “Lectures on Zechariah” (1527) and this interpretation was also quoted in the Calov Commentary Bible, which Bach owned, as well as in many contemporary Lutheran writings. The notion, then, was that God breaks the staff in a covenant-excluding judgment in which the Jerusalem Temple (i.e., and thus the acceptability of Judaism in God’s sight) is destroyed once and for all.

¹⁰ Some modern editions give “von Weitem” (same meaning, “from afar”) here, but the sources do read “von weiten,” an older form employed here for its rhyme with “bereiten.”

¹¹ “Sündenvoll/sündvoll” was an older-German intensified form of “sündig/sündhaft” (“sinful”).

¹² In this context, “weil” in older German is to be understood not as “because” but as a synonym for “solange als” (“so long as”).

¹³ In Lutheran understanding, Jesus appears before God the heavenly father’s “punishment” in ultimately dealing with sinners; this particular understanding would in any event follow from catching the allusion at lines 3–4 of the present aria to Matthew 23:37-39 or Luke 13:34-35, passages that have traditionally been understood to speak of God’s eternal judgment. See also Hebrews 10:29.

¹⁴ Consider Luke 21:22 (where Jesus is depicted as foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem by God through the gentiles), “Denn das sind die Tage der Rache, dass erfüllet werde alles, was geschrieben ist” (“For these are the days of vengeance, so all that is written [i.e., in the holy scriptures] will be fulfilled”). See also Hebrews 10:30.

¹⁵ Consider Jeremiah 23:6, “Zu desselbigen Zeit soll Juda geholfen werden, und Israel sicher wohnen” (“At this same time Judah shall be saved, and [God’s new] Israel [shall] live in safety”); verse 3 also has God saying, “I will gather [‘samlen,’ an older-German form of ‘sammeln’] my flock.” Lutheran theologians understood this prophesied salvation of Judah and Israel as having been fulfilled in a new, “spiritual Israel” under the kingship of Jesus (as opposed to an old, “carnal Israel” under the leadership of Moses).

¹⁶ Some modern editions provide the reading “O grosser Gott der Treu” (here “der” has the same meaning as “von”). The chorale line “O grosser Gott von Treu,” however, is presumably based on Exodus 34:6, “HERR Gott, barmherzig, und gnädig, und geduldig, und von grosser Gnad und Treu” (“LORD God, merciful, and gracious, and patient, and of abounding grace and faithfulness”).

¹⁷ This reads “uns” (“us”), not “und” (“and”) in the surviving original source materials for the cantata; see also fn. 19, below.

¹⁸ A stanza of “O grosser Gott von Macht.”

¹⁹ That is, “us Lutheran Christians”; the first word in this line, “uns” (“us”), is given erroneously in some modern editions of the cantata (and in commentaries on Bach) as “Und” (“and”), a detail that dramatically alters the meaning of this line, and thus of the whole cantata (i.e., changing the meaning to: “and do not repay [any people] according to [their] sins”).