¹ “Bescheren” can mean simply “to bestow,” but in connection with God it typically carries the sense of providential giving: “to appoint,” “to ordain.”

² The sense of this line is derived from Romans 11:6, “Ists aber aus Gnaden, so ists nicht aus Verdienst der Werke; sonst würde Gnade nicht Gnade sein. Ists aber aus Verdienst der Werke, so ist die Gnade nichts” (“If it [justification for eternal salvation] is from [Christ’s] grace, then it is not from [the] merit of [doing the] works [of the law of Moses]; otherwise grace would not be grace”).

³ In later German, “überflüssig” is generally employed as a synonym for “unnötig” (“superfluous[ly]” in the sense of “unnecessary, uncalled for”), but in older German it was sometimes, as here, employed as a synonym for “überfliessend” (“overflowing[ly]”); e.g., Luke 6:38, in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day, speaks of “ein überflüssiges Mass (“a [good] quantity/portion, running over,” “an overflowing measure”).

⁴ “Umsonst” is employed here apparently not in its senses of “vergebens” (“in vain”) or “ohne Vergütung” (“without [our] recompense”) or “kostenlos” (“free[ly]/without charge”), but of “ohne Verdienst” (“without [our] merit”).

⁵ Some modern editions change this “verzuckert” (“sweetens”; or literally/technically, “saccharifies” [i.e., to convert starch into sugar]) to “versüsset” (“sweetens”).

⁶ An adaptation of Genesis 3:19, where God says to Adam, upon what has traditionally been interpreted as God’s punishment of Adam and Eve for their fall into sin, “Im Schweisse deines Angesichts sollst du dein Brot essen” (“In/By the sweat of your face/brow [from the hard work of cultivating unproductive soil] shall you [from now on, banished from the Garden of Eden, get] your bread [to] eat”). The cantata poetry employs the word “geniessen” (“to enjoy/savor”), not the simpler “essen” (“to eat”), to accommodate a rhyme with “beschliessen” (“to conclude,” “to come to an end”).

⁷ The sense of lines 4–5 is derived from the parable of the vineyard laborers in Matthew 20:1-16 (the gospel reading at the liturgical occasion that this cantata was designed for), where the kingdom of heaven is likened to a householder who at various points in the day hires laborers for his vineyard but in the evening pays them all the same day’s wage, a “denarius” coin. The Luther Bibles rendered this “denarius” as a “Groschen.” Lutheranism taught that the householder’s paying his “day laborers” a “Groschen” in the “evening” represented God’s end-time portioning out the unmerited divine reward of eternal salvation to all people of upright behavior who had received the unmerited gift of Christian faith.

⁸ “Da steht der Himmel drauf” (literally, “here/there/because stands heaven hereon/thereon/afterward”) is an extremely clumsy line of poetry. This has typically been rendered in English along the lines of “As sure as heaven stands,” or as “With this Heaven is/stands open.” The more likely sense, however, is derived from the narrative in Luke 20:20-26 (with parallels in Mark 12:13-17 and Matthew 22:15-22) about whether it was right for Judeans to pay tribute to the Roman emporer. In the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day Luke 20:24-25 reads “Zeiget mir den Groschen; wes Bild und Überschrift hat er? Sie antworteten und sprachen: Des Kaisers. Er aber sprach zu ihnen: So gebet dem Kaiser, was des Kaisers ist, und Gott, was Gottes ist” (“[And Jesus said:] ‘Show me the denarius [the Roman coin]; whose image and inscription does it have [stamped upon it]?’ They answered, declaring: ‘The emporer’s.’ But he declared to them: ‘Then give to the emporer what is the emporer’s, and to God what is God’s’”). The import of the cantata poetry, then, would be that its “Groschen” is stamped with heaven’s—i.e., not the emporer’s but the kingdom of God’s—image.

⁹ A stanza of “Wer weiss, wie nahe mir mein Ende?”