Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159

Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem (Behold, let us go up to Jerusalem), BWV 159, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the Sunday Estomihi, the last Sunday before Lent, and probably first performed it on 27 February 1729. The gospel reading for the Sunday, from the Gospel of Luke, includes Jesus announcing his suffering and death in Jerusalem. The cantata's theme and Bach's music foreshadow his Passion.

The cantata text was written by Picander, who also wrote the text for Bach's St Matthew Passion which would have its second performance on Good Friday later that year. He included two stanzas from Passion hymns, Paul Gerhardt's "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden", and a stanza from Paul Stockmann's "Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod" as the closing chorale. Bach structured the work in five movements, and scored it for four vocal soloists, a four-part choir only in the closing chorale, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of oboe, two violin parts, viola and continuo. The first movement is a dialogue between bass and alto, with the bass as the voice of Christ quoting a line from the gospel reading, and the alto representing his followers who resent the announcement. The second movement is a duet of alto and soprano, with the alto continuing the concerns of a follower, juxtaposed by the chorale. The later three movements follow the usual sequence of recitative, aria and chorale. The text of the aria begins with a quote from the Gospel of John, "Es ist vollbracht" (It is accomplished), which Bach set in his St John Passion, which is also a quote from the gospel reading's announcement.