The title Morning Star comes from Revelation 22:16.
This hymn appears (in abbreviated form) as "The Only Son from Heaven" in Lutheran Worship (#72) and The Lutheran Service Book (#402). In both, and as the Gesangbuch notes, it's sung to "its own melody."
I'm not that confident on my translation of "zweigestammte," which I rendered as "of two natures" (although technically, it's an adjective). Stamm means something like family, line, or lineage, and "of two natures" (true God and true man) was the best I could come up with for this context.
The fourth verse seems to draw from both Psalm 119:57 ("The LORD is my portion; I promise to keep your words," although "Theil" isn't the specific word used in the German Psalter) and Isaiah 40:3 ("A voice cries: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'").
The beginning of the seventh verse seems to draw from Isaiah 40:1: "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God." I was unable to make sense of "sich zu hoch an mir vermißt." The only translation my dictionary provides for sich vermissen is to be missing, but this didn't seem to go with "zu hoch" ("too high" or "too highly").
"Tread the serpent's head in pieces" at the beginning of the eighth verse is a reference to "you shall bruise his heel" in Genesis 3:15. I had some problems making sense of all of this verse too.
This hymn appears as "Let the Earth Now Praise the Lord" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#91), Lutheran Worship (#33), and The Lutheran Service Book (#352), although the LW and LSB versions are abbreviated. In all of these, and as the Gesangbuch notes, it's sung to the tune "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland." Here's the TLH arrangement:
Ei nun, Herre Jesu, schick unsre Herzen zu, daß wir alle Stunden rechtgläubig erfunden, darinnen verscheiden zur ewigen Freuden.
Joh. Horn, im Gesangbuch der böhm. Brüder, 1540.
My prose translation:
God's Son is come
To all us devout
Here on this earth
In poor birth
So that He us from sin
Frees and delivers.
He also comes still to-day
And teaches the people
How they from sins
To repentance should turn,
From error and foolishness
To step to the truth.
Those who are not ashamed
And take up His service
Through a true faith
With complete confidence
He will even
Forgive them their sin.
Then He gives to them
In the sacrament
Himself as the meal,
To prove His love
So that they may be content
In their conscience.
Those who remain
Continually and so clothed
Who strive to please
The Lord in everything
They will with joy
Also pass away from there.
Then soon and nimbly
Comes their last end,
Where He will from evil
Their souls redeem
And lead them with Him
To the angel choirs.
From far off He will come
As then will be called,
When the dead will
Rise from the earth
And must as His feet
Present themselves.
Then He will divide them,
The devout to joy,
The evil to Hell
In painful places,
Where they must eternally
Suffer for their vice.
Oh now, Lord Jesus,
Send our hearts
So that we in all hours
May be found truly faithful
Passing away in this
To eternal joy.
Joh. Horn, in the Songbook of the Bohemian Brothers, 1540.
This hymn appears (in abbreviated form) as "Once He Came in Blessing" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#74), Lutheran Worship (#30), and The Lutheran Service Book (#333). In all of these, as the Gesangbuch notes, the text is sung to "its own melody." Here's the TLH arrangement:
"Schein" has two different meanings (glow, light, shine or appearance, look), and either could work in the context ("gibt der Welt ein neuen Schein"). I went with appearance.
"Und uns des Lichtes Kinder macht" (and makes us children of the light) may be a reference to part of Ephesians 5:8: "Walk as children of light."
I couldn't decipher the meaning of the second "des" in the last verse (the first seems to be an abbreviation of "deshalb"), but I don't think leaving it out affects the meaning too much.
This hymn appears as "All Praise to Thee, Eternal God" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#80), "We Praise, O Christ, Your Holy Name" in Lutheran Worship (#35), and "We Praise You, Jesus, at Your Birth" in The Lutheran Service Book (#382). The TLH and LW versions are abbreviated, but the LSB version has all seven verses. In all three hymnals and as the Gesangbuch notes, the text is sung to "its own melody." Here's the TLH arrangement:
For many of these verses, I had to change the word order around quite a bit in order to get lines that made good sense in English.
The door in the ninth verse seems to refer to John 10:9: "'I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.'"
This hymn appears as "All My Heart This Night Rejoices" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#77), "Once Again My Heart Rejoices" in Lutheran Worship (#39), and "All My Heart Again Rejoices" in The Lutheran Service Book (#360). The LW and LSB versions are abbreviated.
The Gesangbuch notes that this text is sung to "its own melody," and this is the tune it's paired with in all three of these hymnals. Here's the TLH arrangement:
In the second verse, there are allusions to Isaiah 11:1 (which informed my translation more than the hymn text itself), Revelation 5:5, and Genesis 3:15. I'm not entirely sure of my translation of "Weibessam." I think it's a combination of "Weib" and "Samen."
In order to make the sense more obvious, I had to move "stets immerdar" (which I translated as "constantly") up a line: "With which man was constantly plagued."
"Heirs in His Father's kingdom" seems to refer to Galatians 4:7: "So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God."
As far as I can tell, the hymn does not appear in The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran Worship, or The Lutheran Service Book. There's a note above the text in the Gesangbuch that it's sung to the tune "Vom Himmel hoch, da k." Here's an arrangement from The Lutheran Hymnal:
"Christenschar" is a combination of "Christen" and "Schar." "Schar" can mean "crowd," "swarm," "horde," and so on, but I felt that "congregation" was a better translation, considering the context.
This hymn appears as "Oh, Rejoice, Ye Christians, Loudly" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#96), "Oh, Rejoice, All Christians, Loudly" in Lutheran Worship (#40), and "O Rejoice, Ye Christians, Loudly" in The Lutheran Service Book (#897). In all of these (and as the Gesangbuch notes: "In its own melody"), the text is paired with the tune "Freuet euch, ihr Christen." Here's the arrangement from TLH:
Verdeutschung des Hymnus: Dies est laetitiae. Schon vor der Reformation in Gebrauch.
My prose translation
The day that is so joyful
For all creatures
For God's Son from Heaven,
Higher than nature,
Of a virgin is born.
Mary, you are chosen
That you would become a mother.
What is so strange that happened?
- God's Son from Heaven,
He is born as a human being.
A little child so praise worthy
Is born for us to-day
Of a virgin pure
For the comfort of us poor people;
Were the little child not born to us,
We would be lost for all time
The salvation is for us all.
O, You sweet Jesus Christ!
That You are born as a human being,
Protect us from hell.
As the sun shines through the glass
With its clear light
And is not dimmed
So everyone notices
In the same way was born
Of a virgin pure and gentle
God's dear Son.
To a manger He was directed
Great torment for us suffered
Here on this earth.
The shepherds in the field were
Told new stories
By the angelic hosts,
How Christ would be born
A great King over all kings;
The talk greatly annoyed Herod,
He send out his messengers
Oh, what a false trick
He devised against Jesus Christ,
He had the little children put to death.
German translation of the hymn The Day Is of Joy. In use even before the Reformation.
I'm not entirely sure that I translated "Mähre" correctly. All translations I could find for this word had to do with horses, which obviously doesn't fit the context. I think it's an-other instance of older German words being spelt differently; a modern rendering would be Mär (Mären in the plural).
It's a bit unclear what "groß" in the line "ein König übr all König groß" is modifying. I took it as a post-positive adjective modifying the first "König" (A great King over all kings), but I think it could also modify the second "König" (A King over all great kings). The second "König" is plural, but the -e of Könige (and alle)is omitted, apparently for metrical reasons.
The hymn appears as "Hail the Day So Rich in Cheer" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#78), although this contains only the first two verses. The Gesangbuch notes that this text is sung to "its own melody," and this is also what it's paired with in TLH:
The first verse uses imagery from the first part of Matthew 25. The parallelism of "schlafen" (sleep) and "schlummern" (slumber) is also present in Psalm 121:4: "Siehe, der Hüter Israels schläft und schlummert nicht" (although these are reversed in the English translation: "Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep").
I find it a bit interesting that the book prints "Oel" and not "Öl." Apparently, the printer didn't have the letter Ö.
Some of the imagery in the fourth verse ("God will turn to us...") bears some resemblance to the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
This hymn appears as "The Bridegroom Soon Will Call Us" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#67), Lutheran Worship (#176), and in The Lutheran Service Book (#514), although the LW and LSB versions are abbreviated. Above the text in the Gesangbuch, there's a note that this is sung either to "its own melody" or to "Ach Gott vom Himmelreiche." All three hymnals pair it with "Ach Gott vom Himmelreiche." Here's the TLH arrangement:
(Verdeutschung des lat. Hymnus Sedulii: A solis ortus cardine)
My prose translation:
Ever should we praise Christ,
Son of the pure virgin Mary,
As far as the good sun shines,
And reaches to the end of all the world.
The blessed Creator of all things
Put on the low body of a servant
That He through the flesh would purchase flesh
And all of His creation would not be corrupted.
The divine grace from heaven greatly
Poured itself into the chaste mother;
A virgin carried a secret pledge
That was unknown to nature.
The virtuous house of the tender heart
Very soon will become a temple of God;
Which no man moves nor has recognized
One found pregnant with God's Word.
The noble mother has given birth,
Whom Gabriel foretold,
Whom Saint John with springing shows
When he [was] still in the womb.
He lay in the hay in great poverty,
The hard manger does not annoy Him;
A little milk became His food,
[He] Who never let a little bird go hungry.
The choirs of Heaven rejoice above
And the angels sing praise to God,
To the poor shepherds is announced
The Shepherd and Creator of all the world.
Praise, honor, and thanks be said to You
Christ, born of the pure virgin,
With the Father and the Holy Ghost,
From now on until eternity.
Dr. Martin Luther, 1524
(German translation of the Latin Hymn of Sedulius: A solis ortus cardine)
The line "Who never let a little bird go hungry" in the sixth verse seems to refer to Psalm 147:9 and/or Matthew 6:26. Obviously, the seventh verse describes the events in Luke 2.
This hymn appears as "Now Praise We Christ, the Holy One" in The Lutheran Hymnal (#104) and (in an abbreviated form) as "From East to East" in Lutheran Worship (#43) and in The Lutheran Service Book (#385).
I'll admit that my translation of the fourth stanza ("The virtuous house of the tender heart") is muddled. Perhaps significantly, this verse is omitted from TLH, LW, and LSB. In fact, it's the only verse left out of the TLH version.
The TLH translation really brings out the reference to Psalm 147:9. The line "der nie kein Vöglein hungern ließ" is rendered as "Who feeds the ravens when they call."
Above the text in the Gesangbuch, there's a note that it's sung to "its own melody." The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Worship follow this, but The Lutheran Service Book pairs the text with the tune "Vom Himmel hoch."
Here's the TLH arrangement of "Christum wir sollen loben schon":
"Geringer als die Engel wirst" ("Become lower than the angels") seems to refer to Hebrews 2:9, although the specific words don't match: "niedriger gewesen ist als die Engel" ("was made lower than the angels").
Above the text, there's a note that this is sung to the tune "Ermuntre dich, mein schw." The hymn isn't present in The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran Worship, or The Lutheran Service Book.
I know the meaning of the individual words in the line "höchst tröstlich ist zu nennen," but I don't understand the sense, so I left that in the original German.
"And make everything bad" doesn't seem to make sense in the context, but I think this is an accurate translation of "und machen alles schlecht."
I'm not too happy with my translation of the stanza "At last, the cross affects us much." For one thing, I'm not sure I quite understood the meaning there. "Abandon" seems too strong a translation, but if I'd translated "läßt" as "leaves," there's a possibility that the lines "It does not leave / Those who constantly hope in it / With true confidence" could be misread. "With true confidence" is part of the relative clause "Who constantly hope...," not part of the larger clause. It's not "It does not leave [them] with true confidence." The lines "He does not let His own, / Even in death, spoil" (in which I had to shuffle some words around) seem to come from Psalm 16:10 (also cited in Acts 13:35), although the specific words are different.
I couldn't find a translation for "erschwingen," but based on the context, it must mean something like "raise."
This hymn appears as "Arise, Sons of the Kingdom" (#69) in The Lutheran Hymnal, although many of the verses aren't included. Of what I've transcribed above, TLH has verses one through five and verse twelve (the last verse). Above the text in the Gesangbuch, there's a note that it's sung to the tune "Aus meines Herzens Grunde," which is also the tune it's paired with in TLH.
This text isn't present in either Lutheran Worship or The Lutheran Service Book.