[1] The text of the motet is the first and eleventh stanza of a poem by Paul Thymich, professor at the Thomasschule of Leipzig where Bach was Thomaskantor.

Johann Schelle, a predecessor of Bach at this post,[2] set this text for the funeral of a university professor, the philosopher and jurist Jakob Thomasius who died in 1684.

[1] His aria was published in 1697 in Leipzig in a collection of more than five thousand hymns, the Gesangbuch by Paul Wagner (1617–1697),[3] of which Bach had a copy in his library.

It is thought that Bach took the text for similar circumstances, and one hypothesis is that he composed the motet for the burial of Johann Schmid [de], an eminent theologian who died in 1731.

[5] The autograph manuscript is lost, but a copy is kept at the Berlin State Library, from the hand of the scribe Christoph Nichelmann, a student of Bach who left the Thomasschule in 1731–1732, thus giving the latest possible date for this work.

When weariness and weakness no longer allow the body to travel the "bitter path of life",[11] it aspires to the peace given by the encounter with Jesus.

The second section provides a contrast, by a metre in common time, imitational writing and its light and trustful character in accord with the text "Come, I will give myself to you".

[12] The third section, moving in the dance rhythm of a menuet,[8] in a "climate of trusting fullness and serenity",[12] is a long statement of faith, particularly emphasizing the key phrase of the motet "You are the right way, the truth and the life."

This phrase is repeated no less than four times, by one choir and then by the other, on the same musical theme varying with each assertion, making the motet's longest movement, as if this long moment of "lyricism and ecstasy" never wanted to end.

It is indeed closer to an aria because it is freer, more complex and in a higher register than a typical chorale melody, for example by Martin Luther and Johann Crüger.

An example of the aria's melodic freedom is the final melisma on the word Weg (way), which rises more than one octave, illustrating the ascent to Heaven.