Psalm 100:4 · Story · Gratitude
Now Thank We All Our God
Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran archdeacon, wrote this hymn of thanks as a grace at table.
When plague came to Eilenburg in 1637, its superintendent went away and its archdeacon stayed to bury the dead.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and bless His name.
- When
- 1636 to 1637 AD (the hymn about 1636, the plague in 1637) (probable)
Summary
Now Thank We All Our God is Catherine Winkworth's English, published in 1858, of a German grace at table by a Lutheran pastor of the seventeenth century. Its stanzas thank God for His wonders and for His gifts from birth onward, and ask Him to keep His people in His grace. An account in The Sunday at Home of 1888 says it was written for the peace that ended the Thirty Years' War, and the record of its printings answers it.
- Martin Rinkart (1586 to 1649) was archdeacon of his home town of Eilenburg from 1617 and passed most of his working life amid the Thirty Years' War.
- In the plague of 1637 he was for a time the town's only clergyman, buried about 4,480 people and lost his first wife on 8 May.
- Rinkart's book of 1663 titles the hymn a grace at table, and Julian holds that it stood in the book's first edition of 1636.
- Julian rejects the story that the hymn was written for the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and calls such stories manufactured.
- Julian calls the hymn the German Te Deum, sung at every national festival and occasion of thanksgiving.
A Grace for the Table
John Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) is the source for the hymn's printings and titles.
Nun danket alle Gott is the German hymn that English speakers sing as Now Thank We All Our God. Its author served the walled town of Eilenburg as its minister through the Thirty Years' War and a plague that filled its graves.
This story belongs to gratitude, the giving of thanks to God for who He is and what He gives, because it shows thanks kept by a man who knew loss at first hand. It answers a plain question: does thanks to God hold when a year brings plague and the death of a wife? The page sets Rinkart's life on a timeline, tells the plague year as the record gives it, weighs the popular telling of the hymn's origin, and reads the hymn beside the verses it rests on.
Rinkart's own Jesu Hertz-Büchlein, in the edition printed at Leipzig in 1663, gives the hymn the title Tisch-Gebetlein, a short prayer at table.
Rinkart's Life in Dates
Julian fixes six of these seven dates and infers the seventh.
The hymn's likely first printing of 1636 and its printings of 1648 and 1858 stand around the plague of 1637 and Rinkart's death in 1649.
To scale: 7 of 7 stops dated; a ring is approximate; a mark that would lie on another stands in a lane under the axis.
- Martin Rinkart is born at Eilenburg in Saxony, the son of a cooper23 April 1586 ADFixed by his own statement and the town register, as Julian prints them (p. 962)
- Rinkart comes into residence at Eilenburg as its archdeaconNovember 1617 ADFixed by Julian (p. 962)
- The Jesu Hertz-Büchlein is printed at Leipzig, probably with the hymn in itabout 1636 ADInferred by Julian, since no copy of the first edition is known (p. 962)
- Plague in Eilenburg, and Rinkart's first wife dies on 8 May1637 ADFixed by Julian (pp. 962 to 963)
- The hymn's oldest surviving text, in Crüger's Praxis, and the peace of 24 October1648 ADFixed by Julian (p. 962)
- Rinkart dies at Eilenburg on 8 December1649 ADFixed by Julian (p. 962)
- Catherine Winkworth's English appears in Lyra Germanica, second series1858 ADFixed by Julian (p. 963) and the 1858 New York printing (pp. 194 to 195)
A timeline of seven dated events from Rinkart's birth to Winkworth's English, the one inferred date drawn as a ring and the six fixed dates as dots.
Eilenburg in the Plague Year
Julian's account of the plague year rests on the life of Rinkart that Rembe and Linke published at Gotha in 1886.
Rinkart studied theology at Leipzig and served at Eisleben and in two villages near it before the council of his home town called him back as archdeacon. The greater part of his working life was passed amid the Thirty Years' War. Eilenburg was a walled town, so it became a refuge for people fleeing the country around it, and the overcrowded town suffered from plague and famine.
In the great plague of 1637 the superintendent of the town's churches left for a change of air and would not come back. On 7 August Rinkart read the funerals of two of the town's clergy and of two country pastors who had fled to the town. For a time he was the only clergyman left, and he often read the burial service over 40 to 50 people a day, about 4,480 in all. At last the refugees were buried in trenches with no service, and some 8,000 people died in the whole epidemic.
Rinkart's first wife, Christina, died on 8 May 1637, and he preached her funeral sermon on 10 May on Psalm 77. He wrote two hymns in her memory, the first an acrostic whose stanzas spell her name. A famine followed the plague, and Rinkart spent what he had to help his people.
I will remember the works of the LORD; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will reflect on all You have done and ponder Your mighty deeds.Psalm 77 opens with a man crying to God in the day of trouble, and in these verses he turns to remember the works of the LORD.
Julian records that Rinkart twice saved Eilenburg from the Swedish army, once early in 1637 and again in 1639. By the peace of 24 October 1648 he was, in Julian's words, "a worn-out and prematurely aged man", and he died in December of the next year.
The Tellings of the Hymn's Origin
Two answers stand to the question of the hymn's origin, each with its source.
Written for the Peace of Westphalia in 1648The Sunday at Home, August 1888, as Julian cites it
Julian names an account in The Sunday at Home of August 1888 that gives the hymn a full origin in November 1648, after the peace. He calls it "a good specimen of the way in which stories of hymns are manufactured" and says the hymn "has no connection with the Peace of Westphalia". He gives a likely source of the story: the army chaplains who held the services of thanksgiving for the peace were ordered to preach on Sirach 50:22 to 24, the passage the hymn paraphrases.
A grace at table, probably printed in 1636John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology
Rinkart finished his book in 1630 and saw its first printing in 1636, the year before the plague. Julian sees no good reason to doubt that the hymn appeared in that first printing. No copy of the edition is known, so the inference rests on the later printings.
The Source in Sirach 50
Sirach is a book of the Apocrypha, which the site reads beside the canon as a study resource and not as Scripture.
Julian finds the hymn's ground in Sirach 50:22 to 24, where Jesus the son of Sirach ends his praise of Simon the high priest with a blessing. The first two stanzas are little more than a paraphrase of these verses. The third is a version of the Gloria Patri, the church's ascription of glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The hymn's first two stanzas follow the blessing of Sirach 50:22 to 24 phrase by phrase.
| Sirach 50:22 to 24, King James Apocrypha | Winkworth's English, 1858 |
|---|---|
| bless ye the God of all | Now thank we all our God, / With heart and hands and voices |
| which only doeth wondrous things every where | Who wondrous things hath done, / In whom His world rejoices |
| which exalteth our days from the womb | Who from our mother's arms / Hath blessed us on our way |
| He grant us joyfulness of heart, and that peace may be in our days | With ever joyful hearts / And blessed peace to cheer us |
| That he would confirm his mercy with us, and deliver us at his time! | And keep us in His grace, / And guide us when perplex'd, / And free us from all ills |
What the Record Leaves Unsaid
The melody first printed in Crüger's Praxis has two claimed sources.
The year the hymn was written is not recorded. The melody has been traced both to a melody by Lucas Marenzo, a choirmaster at Rome, and to a motet by Rinkart, and Julian finds very little evidence for either.
Thanks Before the Hard Year and Through It
Scripture calls for thanks that does not wait for good times, and Rinkart's grace is one example of it.
Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls, yet I will exult in the LORD; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!Habakkuk rejoices in God with the fields empty and the stalls bare, the same God Rinkart's grace thanks at every meal.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name.Hebrews calls continual praise a sacrifice, which places a daily grace among the offerings God's people bring through Jesus.
Gratitude in Scripture rests on the goodness and loving devotion of God, which endure when a harvest fails or a town is struck by plague. The gratitude page sets out the whole of that teaching, from the thank offering of the law to the commands of Paul.
Books to Read Next
Two works a reader can open in full, Julian's dictionary and Winkworth's translations.
A Dictionary of Hymnology, revised edition
John Julian · 1907
The article on Rinkart gives his life, the plague year, the hymn's oldest texts and Julian's case against the legends.
Read on archive.orgLyra Germanica, second series: The Christian Life
Catherine Winkworth · 1858
Winkworth's book prints her English of the hymn under the heading Praise and Thanksgiving, dated to 1636.
Read on archive.orgA Grace That Held
By 1907 Julian could find the hymn in every German hymn book.
Rinkart's grace was written for ordinary meals, and he went on serving his town through the plague, the famine and the war's last decade. Julian records the same grace sung at the completion of Cologne Cathedral in 1880 and at the laying of the foundation stone of the Reichstag building in Berlin in 1884.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology, revised edition (London: John Murray, 1907), article Rinkart, Martin, pp. 962 to 963.
- Catherine Winkworth, Lyra Germanica, second series: The Christian Life (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1858), pp. 194 to 195.
- Sirach (Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), King James Version with Apocrypha, standardized 1769 text, eBible.org edition, public domain.
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