Bach composed the cantata in his fourth year in Leipzig for the
20th Sunday after Trinity. It is counted as part of
his third cantata cycle. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the
Epistle to the Ephesians, "walk circumspectly ... filled with the Spirit" (), and from the
Gospel of Matthew, the
parable of the great banquet (). The German term used in Luther's Bible translation is (wedding meal). The cantata is termed a , being a dialogue between the Soul and Jesus, her bridegroom. The source for the dialogue is, here as in many works of the 17th century, the
Song of Songs. Poet
Christoph Birkmann derived from the wedding feast of the Gospel the Soul as the bride whom Jesus invited to their wedding, while the other characters of the story are not mentioned in the cantata. The poet alludes to the Bible several times, comparing the bride to a dove as in and , referring to the Lord's feast (), to the bond between the Lord and Israel (), to faithfulness until death (), and in the final
movement to "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." (). Instead of a closing chorale, Bach combines this idea, sung by the bass, with the seventh
stanza of
Philipp Nicolai's mystical wedding song "", given to the soprano. Bach first performed the cantata on 3 November 1726. == Scoring and structure ==