Lyrics
Ah, holy Jesus, how hast Thou offended,
That we to judge Thee have in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by Thine own rejected,
O most afflicted!
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee!
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied Thee;
I crucified Thee.
Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered.
For our atonement, while we nothing heeded,
God interceded.
For me, kind Jesus, was Thine incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life's oblation;
Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
For my salvation.
Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay Thee,
I do adore Thee, and will ever pray Thee,
Think on Thy pity and Thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving.
Public domain hymn text (German, 1630; English translation 1897), based on an 11th century Latin meditation.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Johann Heermann wrote "Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen" ("Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended") in fifteen stanzas, first published in 1630 in his collection Devoti Musica Cordis. Heermann based his text on a much older source, a meditation traditionally attributed to Augustine of Hippo but now understood to be the work of later medieval writers, dating from around the eleventh century.
Heermann wrote during one of the most difficult stretches of German history. The Thirty Years' War had begun in 1618; he lost his wife in 1617; throat troubles that would eventually end his preaching career began afflicting him in 1623; and the town of Köben, where he ministered, was raided four times between 1629 and 1634, with plague striking the town in 1631. He wrote many of his hymns, including this one, in the middle of that accumulating hardship, his own suffering standing behind his sustained meditation on Christ's.
The English translation used today comes from Robert Bridges, later England's Poet Laureate, who rendered the text in 1897 for his own collection The Yattendon Hymnal. Bridges had trained and practiced as a physician before turning to literature full time, and his translation is often singled out for how closely it preserves both the meaning and the somber, confessional tone of Heermann's German original.
The hymn's most striking feature is its refusal to let blame rest anywhere but with the singer: "'twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied Thee; I crucified Thee." What could have remained a general doctrine of atonement becomes, in Heermann's hands, an unflinching personal confession — not humanity in the abstract responsible for the crucifixion, but each singer, by name, in turn.
