Unless stated otherwise, my source for hymn texts and tunes is The Lutheran Service Book.

Friday, September 6, 2019

"With the Lord Begin Your Task"

Last year, I noticed that there are seven cross inscriptions in the tune "Fang dein Werk," used with the text "With the Lord Begin Your Task."*  I feel that there might be some significance in there being seven (a Biblical number of completeness) and that there might be some connections between these inscriptions and the hymn text, but I found only one instance that I can make an argument for.

Here are the third and fourth phrases of the tune (which are just a repetition of the first and second phrases):


In the second verse, the text here is "On the Lord cast ev'ry care; / He is your salvation."  There's a cross inscription for "your salvation," illustrating that the Lord has won our salvation through His crucifixion and resurrection.

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*As it appears in The Lutheran Hymnal, the first line of the original German text is "Fang dein Werk mit Jesu an" ("With the Lord begin your task" or - more literally and more prosaically - "Begin your work with Jesus").  Apparently, this line was just shortened to get the title for the tune, but because the title omits the "an" at the end, it actually means "Catch your work."  ("Begin your work" would be "Fang dein Werk an.")  Anfangen is one of a class of German verbs called separable prefix verbs where - when conjugated - the prefix is moved to the end of the clause.  Because the "an-" isn't in the title, the verb looks like the imperative form of fangen, which means to catch.