German: Selig sind die Toten (English: Blessed are the dead) is the incipit of a verse from the Bible frequently used in funeral music of German-speaking composers.
The text appears in Revelation 14:13. In the Luther Bible it begins German: Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben von nun an, in English "Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord, from henceforth" .
The most famous settings are a six-part motet by Heinrich Schütz published in his 1648 collection German: [[Geistliche Chormusik]], and the last movement of German: [[A German Requiem (Brahms)|Ein deutsches Requiem]] by Johannes Brahms.
Other settings include those by Hugo Distler, Johann Hermann Schein, Gottfried Scheidt, Karl Piutti, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (op. 115 n. 1). Johann Sebastian Bach used the verse in a recitative of his cantata German: [[O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60|''O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort'', BWV 60]] |italic=unset.