Now Thank We All Our God
A thanksgiving hymn written beside a mass grave. Worth knowing before you decide it is cheerful.
The words are public domain. We print a hymn only after checking it word for word against a dated old printing, and this one hasn’t been checked yet. Hymnary has it now.
“Now Thank We All Our God” at HymnaryAbout this hymn
Rinkart was a pastor in a walled town during the Thirty Years' War, taking in refugees until plague arrived. He conducted funerals in numbers that are hard to read about, including his wife's.
He wrote this then. Not afterwards, not in recovery, but during. That changes what the words are doing. Thanks here is not a report on how things are going; it is a decision made against the evidence.
It has since become the standard hymn for weddings, Thanksgiving and anniversaries, which is fine, as long as somebody in the room knows where it came from.
For musicians and planners
| Words | Martin Rinkart, 1636 | Public domain |
|---|---|---|
| Translation | Catherine Winkworth, 1858 | Public domain |
| Tune | NUN DANKET ALLE GOTT · Johann Crüger, 1647 | Public domain |
Checked 2026-09-27 against hymnary.org text, tune and person pages (attribution and rights only)
Hymn numbers checked against Hymnary.org’s index of Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Full record: Hymnary.