Der Herr denket an uns (The Lord is mindful of us),[1] BWV 196,[a] is a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The English Bach scholar Richard Jones notes that "although it survives only in a later manuscript copy", its stylistic features are evidence of an earlier date: its text comprises "selected psalm verses only, without any free madrigalian verse", it has no recitative, and the compositional approach "still breathes the air of the seventeenth century".

[3] Many of Bach's later church cantatas were composed for the requirements of the liturgical calendar, but the early ones, including Der Herr denket an uns, were written for special occasions.

They have proposed weddings where it might have been performed, including Bach's own in October 1707, when he married his first wife Maria Barbara in Dornheim.

Besides the three solo voices, Bach scored the work for a four-part choir and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two violins (Vl), viola (Va), cello (Vc), bass (violone) and continuo, as a copy of the score from around 1731 by Johann Ludwig Dietel, a student of Bach, shows.

The musicologist Julian Mincham concludes that "Bach, even at this early stage, was thinking across the movements and beginning to conceive such compositions as unified entities rather than suite-like potpourris".

[2] The soprano aria, "Er segnet, die den Herrn fürchten, beide, Kleine und Große" (He blesses those who fear the Lord, both small and great.

[6] Mincham notes a subtle growth "in the imitative opening motives of the violins taken, incidentally, from the sinfonia and dominating this movement throughout".

[2] The closing chorus, "Ihr seid die Gesegneten des Herrn, der Himmel und Erde gemacht hat.