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Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben BWV 102 / BC A 119
Tenth Sunday after Trinity, August 25, 1726
This cantata, Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben BWV 102 (Lord, your eyes look for faith), originated in the summer of 1726; it is for the tenth Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel reading for this Sunday is found in Luke 19; it gives an account of how Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and of how he cleansed the Temple:And as he came near, he beheld the city and wept over it and said: If you only knew at this time what serves the cause of your peace! But it is now hidden from your eyes. For the time will come over you when your enemies will build a corral around you and your children; besiege you and threaten you from all sides; and will raze you and leave no stone standing on another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.
And he went into the Temple and began to drive out those who sold and bought and said to them: It is written: “My house is a house of prayer,” but you have made it a den of murderers. And he taught daily in the Temple. But the high priests and the scribes and the most prominent among the people considered how they might destroy him and could not find what they might do, for all of the people hung upon him and listened to him. (41–48)
Our cantata builds on the first part of this reading. The name of the librettist is not known, but the annual text cycle the cantata belongs to was printed in 1704 in Meiningen and is possibly the work of Duke Ernst Ludwig of Saxe-Meiningen. As in most of the libretti in this cycle, a Hebrew Bible passage stands at the very beginning. The chosen passage, appropriate to the theme of Sunday reading, “Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben” (Lord, your eyes look for faith), is found in Jeremiah 5 and belongs to the lamentations of the prophet over the sins of the Jewish people:
Gehet durch die Gassen zu Jerusalem und schauet und erfahret und suchet auf ihrer Straße, ob ihr jemand findet, der recht tue und nach dem Glauben frage, so will ich ihr gnädig sein. Und wenn sie schon sprechen: “Bei dem lebendigen Gott!” so schwören sie doch falsch. Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben. Du schlägest sie, aber sie fühlen’s nicht; du plagest sie, aber sie bessern sich nicht. Sie haben ein härter Angesicht denn ein Fels und wollen sich nicht bekehren. (1–3)
Go through the alleys of Jerusalem and look and know and seek upon her streets, if you find anyone who acts righteously and asks after faith, I will be gracious to them. And if they say: “By the living God!” they surely swear falsely. Lord, your eyes look for faith. You strike them, but they do not feel it; you torment them, but they do not improve themselves. They have a harder countenance than a crag and do not want to turn around.
The conclusion of this Bible verse, the “sie . . . wollen sich nicht bekehren,” serves as the transition to the first freely versified movement pair of the cantata text. The beginning of the recitative reads: “Wo ist das Ebenbild, das Gott uns eingepräget, / Wenn der verkehrte Will sich ihm zuwiderleget?” (Where is the likeness God has imprinted in us / If the perverted will sets itself against him?). The close reads, somewhat resignedly:
Der Höchste suchet uns durch Sanftmut zwar zu zähmen,
Ob der verirrte Geist sich wollte noch bequemen;
Doch, fährt er fort in verstockten Sinn,
So gibt er ihn in’s Herzens Dünkel hin.
The Most High seeks indeed through meekness to tame us,
If the erring spirit yet wishes to obey;
But if it persists in its obstinate intent,
Then he surrenders it to the heart’s darkness.
The ensuing aria piercingly laments this apparently hopeless situation:
Weh der Seele, die den Schaden
Nicht mehr kennt
Und, die Straf auf sich zu laden,
Störrig rennt,
Ja von ihres Gottes Gnaden
Selbst sich trennt.
Woe to the soul that no longer
Recognizes the damage
And, inviting punishment to itself,
Runs willfully,
Indeed, even from its God’s grace
Cuts itself off.
Normally this text would have closed the first part of the cantata, performed before the sermon; the second part would have begun with a passage from the New Testament. However, the cantata Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben is an exception to Bach’s treatment of the Meiningen libretti; here the newer biblical passage concludes the first part of the cantata. It is taken from Romans 2, from a passage about the justice of God: “Verachtest du den Reichtum seiner Gnade, Geduld und Langmütigkeit? Weißest du nicht, daß Gottes Güte zur Buße locket? Du aber nach deinem verstockten und unbußfertigen Herzen häufest dir selbst den Zorn auf den Tag des Zorns und der Offenbarung des gerechten Gerichts Gottes” (4–5; Do you despise the riches of his grace, forbearance, and long-suffering? Do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? You, however, after your obstinate and unrepentant heart, you heap upon yourself wrath on the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God). These verses are part of a text usually assigned to the day of penance (Bußtag) as an epistle. Accordingly, the other freely versified movements of the cantata libretto, an aria and a recitative, approach the character of a penitential sermon.
At first the aria raises its voice in warning:
Erschrecke doch,
Du allzu sichre Seele!
Denk, was dich würdig zähle
Der Sünden Joch.
Die Gotteslangmut geht auf einem Fuß von Blei,
Damit der Zorn hernach dir desto schwerer sei.
Be terrified,
You all too secure soul!
Think what you would have to pay
For the yoke of sin.
The forbearance of God walks with leaden foot
So that the wrath hereafter will be that much heavier upon you.
The recitative also warns:
Beim Warten ist Gefahr;
Willst du die Zeit verlieren?
Der Gott, der ehemals gnädig war,
Kann leichtlich dich vor seinen Richtstuhl führen.
Wo bleibt sodann die Buß? Es ist ein Augenblick,
Der Zeit und Ewigkeit, der Leib und Seele scheidet;
Verblendter Sinn, ach kehre doch zurück,
Daß dich dieselbe Stund nicht finde unbereitet!
In waiting there is danger;
Would you lose the time?
The God, who once was gracious,
Can easily lead you before his judgment seat.
Where then is your repentance? It is but the blink of an eye
That divides time and eternity, body and soul;
Blinded mind, ah, but turn back,
That this same hour may not find you unprepared!
In the librettist’s conception, a strophe from Johannes Heermann’s 1630 chorale So wahr ich lebe, spricht dein Gott (As truly as I live, says your God) draws together the libretto’s line of thought:
Heut lebst du, heut bekehre dich,
Eh morgen kommt, dann’s ändern sich;
Wer heut ist frisch, gesund und rot,
Ist morgen krank, ja wohl gar tot.
So du nun stirbest ohne Buß,
Dein Leib und Seel dort brenne muß.
Today you live, today convert,
Before morning comes, things can change;
Who today is fresh, healthy, and ruddy,
Tomorrow is ill, yes indeed, even dead.
Should you die without repentance,
Your body and soul must there burn.
In contrast, the version presented by Bach underscores the foregoing by including an additional strophe from Heermann’s chorale text at this point.
The most impressive part of Bach’s composition is undoubtedly the opening multipartite movement, in which two fugal parts alternate with three nonfugal choral sections, while the thematic material in the instrumental introduction serves in multifaceted and subtle ways as a unifying element. This procedure is necessary due to the difference between the natures of the two fugues, which put the movement’s coherence to an extreme test: the incisive sharpness of “Du schlägest sie, aber sie fühlens nicht” and “Sie haben ein härter Angesicht denn ein Fels” leading into the interval of the tritone, thereby pushing the limits of what was musically possible for the era.
A simply declaimed recitative for bass briefly follows a familiar path. In contrast, however, the first aria, “Weh der Seele, die den Schaden / Nicht mehr kennt,” reaches an intensity of expression that nearly touches the emotional pain threshold. The New Testament passage that—exceptionally—closes the first part of the cantata could have brought about a certain balance here. Yet the wide-ranging intervals between the voice and the strings, derived from the first word of the question “Verachtest du den Reichtum seiner Gnade?” (Do you despise the riches of his grace?), are hardly capable of effecting the intended calm.
Nor, for the moment, does serenity return in the second half of the cantata. Multiply nuanced but thereby conflicted, never quite finding itself, the obbligato instrument in the aria “Erschrecke doch, / Du allzu sichre Seele!” and the tenor part interspersed with rests forestall any tranquility. And even the next to last movement, a recitative accompanied by two oboes, remains in a state of nervous tension—a result of those instruments’ stubbornly repeated interjections from start to finish. The tension is resolved only with the simple closing chorale on the sixteenth-century melody Vater unser im Himmelreich (Our Father in the kingdom of heaven). That two strophes are needed here instead of the usual one may have less to do with textual issues than with counterbalancing the tumultuous musical events that preceded them.
Since the cantata Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben is believed to have occupied a special place in Bach’s vocal works, it comes as no surprise that after 1735 the opening chorus and two arias were incorporated in revised form in the masses in G minor BWV 235 and F major BWV 233. Further, Bach’s second-oldest son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, performed the cantata several times in the 1770s and 1780s in Hamburg, revised in part to suit contemporary tastes.