GENERAL NOTE: Movements 1 and 8 take their texts verbatim from the outer stanzas of the hymn “Was frag ich nach der Welt.” The internal movements either paraphrase other stanzas or quote them literally with the addition of interspersed newly written poetry.

¹ Some modern editions of the cantata here read “Denn du” (“For you”).

² In eighteenth-century and later German, the word “Wollust” was generally employed to refer to pleasure/indulgence in a negative sense (as a vice, for example, in the libretto from Bach’s Cantata 213); but in older German (as in this hymn stanza), “Wollust” could refer to delectation, with positive connotations.

³ The motto “Gott ist unser Zuversicht” (“God [including Jesus, in traditional Christian reading,] is our hope/refuge”) appears in Psalm 46:2 and Psalm 62:9. Both the Hebrew source word “machaseh” and Luther’s rendering of it, “Zuversicht,” can mean “hope,” “trust,” “[source of] confidence,” and/or “refuge.”

⁴ In modern printings of the libretto this is sometimes mistranscribed, in the singular, as “vor allem” (“above all [else]”).

⁵ The book of Revelation depicts the annihilation of a great but wicked city named “Babylon.” Revelation 12:14-18 speaks of Babylon’s “soul” lusting after “purple [clothing], gold, silver, and silk,” among other things. With regard to Babylon/Babel, see also fn. 11, below.

⁶ With regard to “für allen” (“before all [people]”) versus “vor allem” (“above all [else]”), see fn. 4, above.

⁷ This is the reading of the original performing part. Bach’s own score reads “Oft bläst uns eine schale Luft” (“Often [on] us an ill wind blows”).

⁸ This is sometimes given in modern printings as “Acht” (“Take heed”), but Bach’s own materials clearly read “Ach” (“Ah”).

⁹ Contemporary hymnbooks and some modern editions of this cantata here read “Das” (“That”).

¹⁰ Bach’s own score and most modern editions here read “wahre” (“true”). The original performing part reads “rechte” (“proper”).

¹¹ This “tower of hubris” is an allusion to the narrative of Genesis 11:1-9, in which a united human race that all speaks but one language journeys to Shinar, where they decide to make a name for themselves by building a great city, called “Babel” (i.e., Babylon), with a tower that would reach to the heavens. God reacts by diversifying their speech into various languages and scattering the population over the face of the earth. According to traditional biblical interpretation, this was God’s punishment for humanity’s hubris. With regard to Babylon, see also fn. 5, above.

¹² “Trachten nach” had a variety of meanings on older German. Here it is clearly being used in it sense of “to seek after,” as this line is quoting from Luther’s rendering of Romans 12:16, “Habt einerlei Sinn untereinander; trachtet nicht nach hohen Dingen, sondern haltet euch herunter zu den Niedrigen” (“Have one and the same mind among one another; do not seek after lofty things, rather keep yourselves down to the lowly”).

¹³ “Gleiten” (“to slip”) is the verb the Luther Bibles frequently employ in connection with a “Fehltritt” (literally, a “false step”; metaphorically, an “error”).

¹⁴ Literally, “a stale air.”

¹⁵ The word “eingeborne” can be somewhat ambiguous, in the same ways that the various biblical terms underlying it are ambiguous: they all can mean “only-born” (that is, by the woman who gives birth) or “only-begotten” (of the human couple, or of the woman, or of the human male). Thus, English translators have traditionally rendered the biblical terms behind Luther’s various grammatical forms of “gebären” as “to beget” when a male progenitor is the subject, and as “to bear” or “to give birth to” when a female progenitor is the subject. As God’s “only-begotten,” Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is singular in his manner of existence: in traditional Christian doctrine, he is proclaimed as eternally “begotten” of God the father, not temporally made or created.

¹⁶ Normally, religious poetry would speak of Jesus not as God’s “eingebornes Kind” (“only-begotten child”) but “eingeborner Sohn” (“only-begotten son”); see also fn. 15, above. The former is employed here to effect a (slightly inexact) rhyme with the word “Sünd” (“sin”).

¹⁷ By dint of the interspersed poetry here, the sense of the hymn’s word “als” changes from “as” to “than”: The hymn on its own would read (i.e., also with its different puncuation), “Die Welt bekümmert sich, im Fall sie wird verachtet, als wenn man ihr mit List nach ihren Ehren trachtet” (“The world aggrieves itself in the case it is despised, as [for example] when one seeks after it [and] its honors with cunning”).

¹⁸ With regard to “trachten nach” having the sense of “to seek after,” see fn. 12, above.

¹⁹ “The sufferings of this present time” (Luther Bibles, “dieser Zeit Leiden”) is a biblical phrase, famously employed in Romans 8:18.

²⁰ In older German (including frequently in the Luther Bibles), the “Grund” in the phrase “in den Gründen” referred not only generally to “the ground/earth” but also specifically to “the valley [floor]” as opposed to the hill.

²¹ Moles are not in fact blind, but on account of their small eyes they were sometimes used as a symbol of moral blindness. “The world” is again described as “blind” in line 1 of movement 7, below.

²² “Der gelbe Kot” (“yellow dung/mud/clay”) was the German equivalent of the older-English expression “yellow dirt,” employed to refer disparagingly or censoriously to wealth (i.e., alluding to the word “gold,” in its extended use to mean “money” or “wealth”). In his hymn “Worvon will ich jetzund singen” (sung to the tune of “Freu dich sehr, O meine Seele”), Johann Christoph Arnschwanger, a seventeenth-century German Lutheran pastor and poet, wrote the lines “Was soll Gold, der gelbe Kot, / Gegen dem, was rinnt von Gott?” (“What good is gold, the yellow dung, / Against that which flows from God?”). Medically, yellow stool may indicate a malabsorption disorder caused by a parasite, illness, or disease.

²³ This is sometimes given in modern printings not as “es” (“it”) but “er” (“he”).

²⁴ The separable verb “fortmüssen” is the equivalent of the Latin “cogi abire” (“to be forced to leave”) and can simply mean “to need/have to leave.” It is also sometimes employed as a euphemism for “sterben” (“to die/perish”).

²⁵ “Sonst” was employed in a variety of ways in older German, including as a synonym for “ja freilich” (“yes assuredly”).