Written at Kiel, 1641, this hymn carried the heading “A Song of Comfort. God will care for and help everyone in His own time. ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee.’ Psalm 55:22.”

George Neumark had just passed through a terrible time in his life. A young student, he had been robbed by thugs and left without money and no way to earn a living. Unexpectedly, after a month he obtained a job as a tutor in the family of a judge in Kiel, “which good fortune,” he said, “coming suddenly and as if fallen from heaven, greatly rejoiced me, and on that very day I composed to the honor of my beloved Lord the hymn, well-known here and there, WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT, and had certainly cause enough to thank the divine compassion for such unlooked for grace shown to me.”

After the hymn was published in 1657 with Neumark’s melody, it become very popular in Germany, and was sung at the funeral of Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia. Catherine Winkworth (see Biographies) made two different translations from the German, this one being altered from her Chorale Book for England, 1863.

  WER NUR DEN LIEBEN GOTT (also known as NEUMARK) is from the first line of the original German hymn, which translated is “Who will only let the good God rule.” Neumark’s melody did not flat the sixth note of the scale, se all of his E’s were natural. Bach liked the tune and used it in his Cantatas 21, 27, 84, 88, 93, 166, 179, and 197. Organ settings of it are found in his Orgelbuchlein, in the Schubler Chorales, and is the Miscellaneous Preludes. Mendelssohn put it with the text “To Thee, O Lord, I Lift My Spirit” in his oratorio St. Paul. More than 400 texts have been sung to this tuned! 

George Neumark was born March 16, 1621, the son of a clothier in Langensalza, Thuringia, Germany. After graduating from the gymnasium at Gotha, he was traveling with merchants toward Lubeck when the robbery occurred. Tutoring for two years, he saved enough money to go to Konigsberg University, where he studied law and poetry for five years. After several years and positions in many places, he became court poet, library and registrar to Duke Wilhelm II of Sachse-Wiemar. In 1653 he was admitted as a member of the Fruit-bearing Society, the foremost literary organization of the time, and was its secretary in 1656. The final mouths of his life were spent in total blindness, and death came July 18, 1681. He wrote some secular poetry and 34 hymns, but is chiefly remembered for this classic hymn and tune.