It was written between 1527 and 1529, while plague swept Wittenberg, Luther himself fell dangerously ill, Turkish armies pressed the borders, and attacks came from every theological direction. We call it the battle hymn of the Reformation, but that phrase was coined in Basel in 1850; an Augsburg broadsheet of 1529 called it what it was to the people who first sang it: “a hymn of comfort.” Psalm 46 supplies the opening line, and then the devil walks in, though he is never mentioned in the psalm. Luther explained the liberty in 1531: Israel sang the psalm for a city, Christians sing it because God defends His Word against the gates of hell. Translating the Bible he rendered the Hebrew for refuge abstractly, Zuversicht; writing a hymn he needed stone, and chose Burg. The plodding even-note version was an accident: unaccompanied singing in echoing buildings dragged the tempo until Luther’s syncopations wore away, and our 656 restores them. Gustavus Adolphus had it played on trumpets and kettledrums before Lützen in 1632. Never stop after stanza one, where the devil is still winning.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026