GENERAL NOTE: Movements 1 and 7 take their texts verbatim from the outer stanzas of the hymn “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam.” The remaining movements paraphrase the internal stanzas.

¹ Here “selbst” is apparently a poetically clipped form of “selbstig,” as a one-syllable synonym for the adjective “eigenes” (“own”). This phrase, “through his own blood,” poetically unclipped, would have been “durch sein selbstiges Blut” or, better, “durch sein eigenes Blut.”

² The verb “nehmen” here is a clipped form of “annehmen” (“to accept,” or “to take on”). John (known as “the Baptist”) was said in the gospels (explicitly in Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3; implicitly in Matthew 3:8) to have preached “a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” In this context, John’s baptizing of Jesus was considered theologically somewhat troubling, as Jesus was proclaimed to be without sin (e.g., 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15, 1 John 3:5). Matthew 3:14-15 addresses this challenge by proclaiming that Jesus was baptized not because he “needed” to be, but only because he accepted it from John, by declaring “es gebührt uns, alle Gerechtigkeit zu erfüllen” (“it befits us [for me to be baptized], to fulfill all righteousness”).

³ “Er wollte uns ein Bad stiften” does not mean “he wanted to draw/run a bath for us”; in Bach’s day, that would have been “er wollte uns ein Bad zurichten.”

⁴ As proclaimed, with similar language, in Titus 3:4-6, “Da aber erschien die Freundlichkeit und Leutseligkeit Gottes, unsers Heilandes, nicht um der Werke willen der Gerechtigkeit, die wir getan hatten, sondern nach seiner Barmherzigkeit machte er uns selig, durch das Bad der Wiedergeburt und Erneuerung des heiligen Geistes, welchen er ausgegossen hat über uns reichlich durch Jesum Christum, unsern Heiland” (“When, however, [in the gospel] the kindness and love for humankind of God our Savior appeared—not on account of the works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—he made us [to be] blessed [with salvation], through the [ritual] bathing of rebirth [i.e., by baptism] and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out over us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior”). “Leutseligkeit (literally, “blessedness of/toward people”) is Luther’s biblical rendering of the New Testament’s term “philanthropia”; in his commentary on Titus, Luther gave “Menschen-Liebe” (“love of/for humans”) as another rendering.

⁵ Luther connected baptismal water with the blood shed by Jesus on the cross. In his commentary on 1 John 5:6, he wrote: “Christus kommt also nicht durch Wasser allein, sondern durch Wasser, welches mit dem Blute verbunden ist, d.i. durch die Taufe, welche mit Blut gefärbt ist” (“So Christ does not come through water alone, but through water which is connected with the blood [of the cross], i.e., through baptism, which is tinged with blood”). In this sense the water of Lutheran baptism was understood to be “blood-tinged” and thus all the more salvific.

⁶ That is, the antecedent of “es (“it”) is “[das] Bad” (“the bath/bathing [that becomes the sacrament of baptism]”).

⁷ “Gelten” is used here in one of its older-German senses, as a synonym for “einbringen” (“to yield,” or “to bring”).

⁸ “Ein neues Leben” is Luther’s rendering of an expression of the apostle Paul’s that is traditionally rendered in English as “newness of life.” Romans 6:4, in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, reads “So sind wir ja mit ihm begraben durch die Taufe in den Tod, auf dass, gleich wie Christus ist auferweckt von den Toten durch die Herrlichkeit des Vaters, also sollen auch wir in einem neuen Leben wandeln” (“Thus we [followers] are buried with him [Jesus] through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of [God] the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life”).

⁹ “Schlecht” is used here in the older German sense of “schlicht” (“plain and simple”).

¹⁰ Adapted from Matthew 3:17, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “Und siehe, eine Stimme vom Himmel herab sprach: Dies ist mein lieber Sohn, an welchem ich Wohlgefallen habe” (“And look, down from heaven a voice declared: ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased’”). The corresponding lines in the hymn read “Er sprach: Das ist mein lieber Sohn; / An dem ich hab Gefallen” (“He [God] declared: ‘That is my beloved son; / In him I am pleased’”).

¹¹ The language and sense of this line is derived from Revelation 5:9, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day usually reads “du … hast uns erkauft mit deinem Blut” (“you [the Lamb of God, Jesus] have purchased [for God] us [Christian sinners] with your blood [on the cross]”); some Luther Bibles of Bach’s day do read “du … hast uns [für] Gott erkauft mit deinem Blut” (“you have purchased us for God with your blood”). Whatever the reading, the image here is Jesus’s purchasing of forgiveness/salvation for the sinner both from and for God.

¹² As narrated in Mark 1:10 (“the spirit/Spirit), Matthew 3:16 (“the spirit/Spirit of God”), and Luke 3:22 (“the holy/Holy spirit/Spirit”).

¹³ The biblical wording, in Matthew 28:19, is “lehret alle Völker” (“teach all the peoples [of the earth]”).

¹⁴ This understanding of the word “gerecht” as “justification” (that is, the basis for the granting of eternal salvation) is derived from Luther’s famous and much-disputed rendering of Romans 3:28. The original Greek texts read “Logizometha gar dikaiousthai pistei anthropon choris ergon nomou” (“We therefore reckon a/the person to be righteous/justified [in God’s eyes] by [Christian] faith, without [necessarily having successfully carried out the] works of the law [of Moses]”). Luther’s (final) translation—the one in use in Bach’s day—reads “So halten wir es nun, dass der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werk, allein durch den Glauben” (“Now therefore we hold it [to be true] that the person may [turn out to] be justified [in God’s eyes for eternal salvation] without the work/achievement/agency of the law [of Moses], by [Christian] faith alone”). Modern Luther Bibles and other German Bibles have updated Luther’s renderings of this key passage, either lightly or heavily.

¹⁵ A conflation of the sentiments in Mark 16:16, “Wer da gläubet und getauft wird, der wird selig werden” (“Whoever does believe [in Jesus] and is baptized, he [that follower of Christ] will become blessed [with eternal salvation]”); and Romans 10:4, “Wer an den glaubt, der ist gerecht” (“Whoever believes in [Christ], he [that follower of Christ] is justified [for eternal salvation]”).

¹⁶ Bach’s own materials give both “Glaub und Taufe” (“faith and baptism”) and “Glaub und Liebe” (“faith and [God’s] love”).

¹⁷ The line is loosely based on the language and sentiments of Romans 5:1-2, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “Nun wir denn sind gerecht worden durch den Glauben, so haben wir Friede mit Gott, durch unsern HERRN Jesum Christ, durch welchen wir auch einen Zugang haben im Glauben zu dieser Gnade, darinnen wir stehen” (“Now because we are justified [for salvation] through faith, we thus have peace with God, through our LORD Jesus Christ, through whom in faith we also have an access to this grace in which we stand”).

¹⁸ Using the langauge of John 8:24, “so ihr nicht glaubt, dass ichs sei, so werdet ihr sterben in euren Sünden” (“if you do not believe that I am the one [sent from above by God the Father], then you will die in your sins”).

¹⁹ The “Höllenpfuhl” (“hell’s pool”), or “Schwefelpfuhl” (“pool of brimstone”), was associated in Lutheranism with the “hell” that is understood to be the place where unbelievers, having died their “first death” (i.e., the temporal, “earthly death”), await the ignominious resurrection of their bodies and the perfect realization of eternal damnation. This understanding was based on Lutheran interpretation of Luther’s rendering of Relevelation 20:14, “Der Tod und die Hölle wurden geworfen in den feurigen Pfuhl; das ist der ander Tod” (“Death and hell were thrown into the fiery pool [which burns with brimstone/sulfur, according to Revelation 19:20, 20:10, and 21:8]; this is the ‘second death’ [i.e., the eternal, ‘spiritual death’]”).

²⁰ “Menschenwerk,” a word employed in Luther’s rendering of Psalm 17:4, was defined in the leading eighteenth-century dictionary as “das Werk, und in weiterer Bedeutung, das Tun und Lassen der Menschen” (“the work, and in a broader sense, the actions and omissions of persons”).

²¹ “Der Glaub allein die Kraft versteht” (“Faith alone understands the power”) is a contemporary variant reading from what Luther, the author of the hymn, had written: “Der Glaub im Geist die Kraft versteht” (“In the [Holy] Spirit, faith understands the power”). The variant reading in the cantata appears to create an unfortunate false parallel between lines 1 and 3. Line 1 says that the eye sees “water alone” (that is, sees only water), but line 3 does not mean that faith understands “power alone” (only power). Rather, the sense here is “Faith alone (only faith) understands the power,” a common Lutheran sentiment.

²² On blood in the water of baptism see fn. 5 above.

²³ “Für” here means not “for” but “before” (in the spacial sense of “in front of”), as dictated by the (dative) “ihm” in “für ihm”; “for him/it” would have used the (accusative) “ihn,” in “für/vor ihn.”