 A connection is also provided by the image of flooding water that the psalm conveys, which begins "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side" (), and continues "then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul, then the proud waters had gone over our soul" ().The poet paraphrased it in the central recitative to "" ("Their fury would have, like a raging tide and like a foaming wave, flooded over us").Bach first performed the cantata on 30 January 1735.