These are the ten sacred commandments

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These are the holy ten commandments is a hymn by Martin Luther . It belongs to the series of his catechism songs and paraphrases the Ten Commandments ( Ex 20 : 1–17  LUT ). Luther associated it with the melody ? / i a popular quiet that goes back to the 12th century. It is contained in the Evangelical Hymnbook (No. 231, rubric Divine Service - Confession ). Audio file / audio sample

Emergence

Song versions of the Ten Commandments have been around since the 12th or 13th century, including one by Heinrich Laufenberg . However, Luther did not use any of them, but instead created a completely new text. The fact that this already happened in the course of his first song creation in 1524 and that the 12-stanza These are the sacred ten commandments was followed in the same year by the 5-stanza ten-commandment song Mensch, Sie haben leben blessedly followed, shows how important the topic is to him was. In the Small Catechism (1529), after the morning prayer, he recommends: "Then went to your work with joy and sang a song, like the ten commandments, or what your devotions give".

It was not about praise, plea and thanks to God or about publicly professing the (new) faith, but about memorizing and appropriating the basic beliefs in an easily recognizable form - also a central concern of the Reformation . In the same year, the catechism hymns We all believe in one God (Credo) and Jesus Christ, our Savior, who turned away the wrath of God from us (Last Supper), later then our Father in heaven (Our Father) and Christ, our Lord, came to Jordan (baptism).

Form and content

The twelve stanzas each consist of four masculine rhyming lines, of which the first three have eight syllables and the fourth, with a noticeable difference (except in stanza 5), ​​has only seven syllables. Each stanza closes with the Kyrieleis , which answers the teaching with a plea to God for mercy.

The first of the twelve stanzas represents the divine origin of the commandments. The two final stanzas give them a specifically Lutheran interpretation that is linked to Paul : God's commandment leads to the knowledge of sin and only in this way to a life of gratitude and loving obedience, in which the commandments again provide guidance. The Christian remains dependent on the mediation of Christ, without whom it is "lost with our deeds".

The stanzas 2 to 10 each rewrite one of the commandments, whereby the originally second, the ban on images , is omitted according to ancient church tradition and verse 10 summarizes commandments 9 and 10. Economical concretisations be added in all verses of each bid paraphrase, the United supplemented regularly by their positive counterparts messenger. The two last lines of stanza 10 give the summary with the golden rule that Jesus himself formulated in the Sermon on the Mount ( Mt 7,12  LUT ).

Text in the Evangelical Hymnal

Dys synd die heylgen ten commandment , Erfurt Enchiridion , 1524

1. These are the holy ten commandments
which our Lord God gave us
through Moses, faithful to his servant,
high on Mount Sinai.
Kyrieleis.

2. I am your God alone, the Lord,
you shall no longer have any gods;
you should trust me completely,
love me from the bottom of your heart.
Kyrieleis.

3. You shall not use
the name of God your Lord to dishonor ;
you should not praise rightly or well
without what God himself speaks and does.
Kyrieleis.

4. You shall sanctify the seventh day, so
that you and your house may rest;
you should stop doing so
that God may have his work in you.
Kyrieleis.

5. You shall honor and be obedient to
your father and your mother
and wherever your hand can serve him;
so you will have a long life.
Kyrieleis.

6. You shall not kill angrily,
do not hate or take revenge yourself, have
patience and gentle courage
and also do good to the enemy.
Kyrieleis.

7. You shall keep your marriage pure, so
that your heart is not mine,
and keep your life chaste
with discipline and temperance.
Kyrieleis.

8. Thou shalt not steal money nor property,
nor should the sweat and blood of someone proliferate;
you shall open your gentle hand to
the poor in your land.
Kyrieleis.

9. You shall not be a false witness, you shall
not lie to your neighbor;
you shall save his innocence
and cover his shame.
Kyrieleis.

10. You shall
not covet your neighbor's wife or house , nor anything from them;
you should wish him all the best,
as your heart does to you.
Kyrieleis.

11. All the commandments are to give us
that you should recognize your sin, O human child,
and learn
how to live before God.
Kyrieleis.

12. May the Lord Jesus Christ help us,
who has become our mediator;
it is lost with what we do,
but deserve vain anger.
Kyrieleis.

Melody and musical arrangements

The old pilgrimage melody “In God's name we go” (EG 498), which Luther chose, remained associated with the text, although there were a few alternative suggestions. It was alienated from its originally ecclesiastical character by increasing the key note three times .

Johann Sebastian Bach's arrangements (organ chorals BWV 635, 678 and 679, opening chorus of cantata 77 ) testify to the presence of the song in Lutheran catechesis of the 18th century .

literature

  • Gerhard Hahn: 231 - These are the holy ten commandments . In: Martin Evang, Ilsabe Seibt (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelischen Gesangbuch . No. 20 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-50343-0 , p. 18–22 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Wilhelm Lucke: The two songs about the ten commandments . In: D. Martin Luther's works. Critical Complete Edition , Volume 35, Weimar 1923, pp. 135–141

Web links

Commons : These are the sacred ten commandments  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Dys synd die heylgen ten commandments  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Original text
  2. ↑ According to the old church tradition, the ban on images is outdated by the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. The Calvinist Reformation decided otherwise.
  3. ↑ according to the old Lutheran church