Cantata no. 178: Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, BWV.178

Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält (If God the Lord does not remain on our side), BWV 178, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the eighth Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 30 July 1724.

It is the eighth cantata Bach composed for his chorale cantata cycle, the second cantata cycle he started after being appointed Thomaskantor in 1723. The cantata is based on the eight stanzas of the hymn "Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält" (1524) by Justus Jonas, a paraphrase of Psalm 124. Different from most cantatas in the cycle, the text retains not only the first and last stanza of the chorale but six stanzas, two of them expanded by contemporary lines by an unknown librettist, who also paraphrased two stanzas into aria texts. The first movement is a chorale fantasia, the second a chorale stanza with recitative, the third an aria, the fourth and central movement is a chorale for a solo voice, the following two movements repeat the pair of chorale with recitative and aria, and the cantata is closed by two stanzas in a four-part setting. Bach thus wrote five different ways of chorale setting.