Jewish Wisdom On Health and Healing

Our house church is focusing on physical and emotional healing in our August meetings. I found this gem from the Apocrypha in Willard Swartley's 2012 book, "Health, Healing and the Church's Mission," one of the resources we are using for our study:

Honor physicians for their services,

    for the Lord created them,

for their gift of healing comes from the Most High,

    and they are rewarded by the king.

The skill of physicians makes them distinguished,

    and in the presence of the great they are admired.

The Lord created medicines out of the earth,

    and the sensible will not despise them…

And he gave skill to human beings

    that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.

By them the physician heals and takes away pain;

    the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.

God’s works will never be finished,

    and from him health spreads over all the earth.

My child, when you are ill, do not delay,

    but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you.

Give up your faults and direct your hands rightly,

    and cleanse your heart from all sin.

Offer a sweet-smelling sacrifice and a memorial portion of choice flour,

    and pour oil on your offering, as much as you can afford

Then give physicians their place, for the Lord created them;

    do not let them leave you, for you need them.

There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians,

    for they, too, pray to the Lord

that he grant them success in diagnosis

    and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.

Those who sin against their Maker

    will be defiant toward the physician.

 Sirach 38:1-15 (NRSV)