Was Gott tut, das ist Wohlgethan in B-flat major, BWV 98

In his fourth year in Leipzig, Bach wrote the cantata for the 21st Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 10 November 1726. It is regarded as part of his third annual cycle of cantatas. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, "take unto you the whole armour of God" (Ephesians 6:10–17), and from the Gospel of John, the healing of the nobleman's son (John 4:46–54). The cantata opens with the first stanza of the chorale "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" (1674) by Samuel Rodigast, but it is not a chorale cantata in the strict sense of Bach's second annual cycle, cantatas on the stanzas of one chorale. He had then treated the same chorale completely in Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, BWV 99 (1724), and would do it later once more in Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, BWV 100 (1732).