This profoundly felt work provides the best possible evidence that Bach composed no immature cantatas. One of his earliest essays in the form, BWV 131 ("Out of the deep have I called") was composed in 1707 or 1708 in Mühlhausen, where Bach served as organist during that period. One of relatively few autograph scores of the cantatas to survive, BWV 131 includes the notation that it was "set to music at the request of Heern D. Georg: Christ: Eilmar." Eilmar was archdeacon of St. Mary's in Mühlhausen, a man with whom Bach had developed a particular friendship—Eilmar later stood as godfather to the composer's firstborn son, Wilhelm Friedemann. The Bach scholar Christoph Wolff has also suggested that Eilmar may have been the author of the text. Like many other early cantata texts, it is largely based on a biblical source, Psalm 130. Juxtaposed with the entire setting of the psalm are two strophes from the chorale "Herr Jesu Christ" by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt, employed in the arias for bass and tenor. No precise liturgical occasion for this profoundly penitential cantata has been established, although it may have been used at a commemorative service of penitence following a great fire that devastated Mühlhausen in May 1707, shortly before Bach took up his post. In spite of the predominantly sober mood, the work is illuminated by the flashes of word painting characteristic of Bach's earlier cantatas. Also consistent with the early type of cantata are the opening orchestral sinfonia and lack of closed forms; the work falls into interconnected blocks rather than individual numbers. Thus the sinfonia leads directly into the opening chorus, which is itself divided into sections, a slow introduction and quicker fugal continuation. This is followed by a through-composed bass arioso-like passage with oboe obbligato in which the plaint-like words of the psalm alternate with those of an ornamented version of the chorale intoned by solo soprano. The note of hope brought by the chorale is maintained by the chorus ("I wait for the Lord") that stands at the center of the work. The succeeding tenor aria returns to the minor as the text speaks of the soul's long wait for morning. Again a stanza of the chorale, this time sung by the alto, is superimposed. The final chorus begins with a dramatic stroke, a threefold invocation on the word "Israel," before proceeding to conclude this remarkable cantata with a fugue.

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