¹ Hosea 11:8.

² Some cantata translations give “How shall I give thee/you up,” which is closer to the Hebrew text of Hosea 11:8 but is not what Luther’s German rendering means.

³ By the time of the prophet Hosea, “Ephraim” (the biblical Joseph’s younger son, and the name for the Israelite tribe of this son’s descendants) had become a designation for all ten biblical tribes of the northern Kingdom of Israel (as opposed to the two biblical tribes of the southern Kingdom of Judah). Revelation 7:4-8 speaks of a cosmic restoration of twelve tribes, among which, in its listing, the name “Joseph” is substituted for “Ephraim.” Ephraim was taken to have been left out in these verses on account of its falling away from God into idolatry (cf. Hosea 4:17). The cantata librettist, in movement 2, thus reads “Ephraim” and its synonym here, “Israel,” as exemplars of the mocking of God (cf. Galatians 6:7) by idolatry.

⁴ Some cantata translations give the rendering “How shall I deliver thee/you,” which is closer to the Hebrew text of Hosea 11:8 but is not what Luther’s German rendering means.

⁵ In this line, “billig” does not mean “cheaply,” nor “simply.” Here the word is an archaic synonym for “angemessen” (“meetly/justly/fittingly”). There is no corresponding word for Luther’s “billig” in the Hebrew text of Hosea 11:8.

⁶ Some cantata translations give the rendering “How shall I set thee/you as Zeboim/Zeboiim,” which is closer to the Hebrew text of Hosea 11:8 but is not what Luther’s German rendering means. Luther’s verb “zurichten,” here, is an archaic synonym for “verderben” (“ruin/destroy”).

⁷ Admah and Zeboiim were cities in the same valley as Sodom and Gomorrah, likewise destroyed for their wickedness. “Sodom and Gomorrah” and (less often) “Admah and Zeboiim” both became proverbial phrases standing as expressions of God’s wrath.

⁸ Some cantata translations give the rendering “Mine/My heart is turned within me,” which is closer to the Hebrew text of Hosea 11:8 but is not what Luther’s German rendering means.

⁹ Some cantata translations give the rendering “my repentings are kindled together,” which is not what Luther’s German rendering means.

¹⁰ The “your” in “your sins” is unambiguously singular in the German, and thus these lines are addressed not to God’s enemies but to the speaker, in an internal dialogue.

¹¹ “Und drückt den Nächsten um die Schuld” does not mean “And forces the guilt onto your neighbor,” nor “And shifts the blame onto your neighbor.” This line—hyperliterally, “And presses the neighbor for the debt,” is drawing on the language of the gospel portion, Matthew 18:23-35 (the parable of the unforgiving servant), that was chanted within the liturgical occasion for which the cantata was designed. In Matthew 18:28 a servant (whose own debt his master had treated leniently) presses his fellow servant who is unable to pay back a debt (“Schuld”) and has him put in jail; in anger the servant’s lord/master (“Herr”) then, in 18:34, takes vengeance on the debt-unforgiving servant: “Und sein Herr ward sehr zornig und überantwortete ihn den Peinigern, bis dass er bezahlte alles, was er ihm schuldig war” (“And his [the unforgiving servant’s] lord/master became very angry and handed him over to the [prison-guard] torturers, till he should pay all that he was in debt to him”).

¹² With regard to Sodom, see fn. 7, above.

¹³ In modern German “hinlegen” means “to lay down” but in older German it was also used as a synonym for “weglegen, bei seite legen” (“to lay aside”).

¹⁴ “Zorn, Zank und Zwietracht” (“anger, strife, and discord”) are among the many “Werke des Fleisches” (“[evil] works of the flesh”) listed in Galatians 5:19-20.

¹⁵ “Des Gesetzes Ende” does not mean “the source of the law,” nor “the law’s foundation,” nor “the ultimate law.” This line is quoting Romans 10:4, “Christus ist des Gesetzes Ende; wer an den glaubet, der ist gerecht” (“Christ is the end/fulfillment of the law [of Moses]; whoever believes in him [Christ], he [that person] is righteous/justified [for salvation]”). For the Lutheran believer, then, Jesus is the end of Mosaic law and the starting point for salvation through his sacrifice.

¹⁶ These lines derive much of their sense from Colossians 2:13-14, which in the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day reads “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 blood of Jesus]”). “Handschrift” is the Luther Bible’s rendering of the word “cheirographon” in Colossians 2:14, the term for any document written in one’s own hand as a proof of obligation, as for example a note of indebtedness, an I.O.U. The bond that lies to humanity’s charge because of its debt (of sin) to God—associated in Colossians with the Law of Moses understood as a “Schuldregister” (“list of debts”)—was said to be canceled/reckoned by virtue of the I.O.U.’s having been set aside through humans’ identification (by faith) with Jesus’s vicarious death on the cross.

¹⁷ The full sense of this line (and see also movement 4) is derived from 2 Corinthians 5:19, “Gott … rechnete ihnen ihre Sünden nicht zu” (“God … did not reckon their sins unto them”).

¹⁸ It had long been a Christian view that even just one drop of Jesus’s blood would suffice to atone for all sin.

¹⁹ The full sense of this line is derived from Romans 4:3, “Abraham hat Gott geglaubt, und das ist ihm zur Gerechtigkeit gerechnet” (“Abraham believed God, and this [faith] is reckoned unto him for righteousness”).

²⁰ “Sie” here means not “they” (the drops—which would have required plural verb forms) but “it” (the sum).

²¹ This line may be drawing on 1 Peter 4:8, “die Liebe deckt auch der Sünden Menge” (“Love covers even the multitude of sins”).

²² A stanza of “Wo soll ich fliehen hin?”

²³ Death, devil, hell, and sin (in traditional Christian interpretation) are the four “eschatological enemies” of humankind.