This chorale prelude sets a psalm chorale, a chorale sung at the Lutheran service with a text from the Book of Psalms. The text of this chorale is a paraphrase by Martin Luther of the text of Psalm 124. The first verse reads, "How would things be if God were not with us at this time, Israel should ask itself. If God were not with us we would have to give up, because we are such a poor tiny house, mistreated by so many people, who all persecute us." Buxtehude's setting of the chorale is typical of his chorale-based organ works. The chorale tune is in the soprano and is somewhat embellished. It is accompanied by three other voices. Also Buxtehude engages in some play with musical rhetoric vivifying elements in the text through his approach to the ornamentation of the chorale melody. At the point in the chorale melody when the text has the words "mistreated" and "persecuted," Buxtehude includes a downward leap of a diminished fourth in the linear treatment of the melody. This sort of linear dissonance was often associated with evil or wrongdoing during the seventeenth century.

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