Ist Gott für mich

Meter: 7.6. 7.6. D
Source: David Spaiser, Vier und zwaintzig Geystliche Lieder, 1609
Proper Text: If God Himself Be for Me (Ist Gott für mich, so trete)

Zahn No. 5394


This tune originated as a secular melody in Elizabethan England (see Böhme’s Altdeutsches Liederbuch, No. 85). Its first appearance in connection with a sacred text is in David Spaiser, Vier und zwaintzig Geystliche Lieder, 1609, where it is joined to the text “O God, I Call Upon Thee (O Gott, ich tu dirs klagen),” a scan of which is available here. In recent years it has been connected to Paul Gerhard’s text “If God Himself Be for Me (Ist Gott für mich, so trete).”