He said, … “For I am the Lord who heals you.” [Exodus 15:26b (CSB)]
For three days, Israel traveled across the desert without finding any water. When they arrived at Marah, the exhausted and thirsty group was disappointed to find the water undrinkable because of its bitterness. When Moses cried out to the Lord, God told him to throw a piece of wood into the water to make it sweet. It was then that God proclaimed His name to be Jehovah Rapha, the “Lord who Heals You.” Jehovah Rapha took the bitter out of the Israelites’ water and made it palatable.
Jehovah Rapha does more than turn bitter water sweet. He can heal any physical ailment. Scripture tells us He made the barren fertile, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers clean, and even raised people from the dead. While the hands that do the work may be mortal (as were Moses’ when he tossed that wood into the water, Isaiah’s when he applied a poultice to Hezekiah’s head, and a surgeon when he successfully removes a tumor), the healing always comes from God! Jehovah Rapha, however, is more than the Great Physician (and water purifier)!
The Hebrew word rapha means to heal, to cure, to restore or repair. Originating from Arabic and Ethiopic words meaning to darn, stitch together or mend, rapha occurs about sixty-seven times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Rapha conveys the sense of restoring wholeness where destruction, harm, disease, unrest, or confusion have made inroads. It isn’t limited to making foul water drinkable or healing physical ailments. Rapha is used for restoring land, cities, broken hearts and minds, and covenant relationships as well as bodies. Emphasizing that it is the Lord’s choice to fix what has been broken or tainted, the subject of the verb rapha usually is the Lord.
In the true sense of the word, Jehovah Rapha is more than the Great Physician. He’s the tailor who stitches up the tears in the fabric of our lives. He’s the restoration specialist who scrubs out the gunk and mold left from life’s devasting storms and the handyman who fixes what’s no longer working in our lives. Instead of darning socks, He’s the one who weaves together the fibers that hold us together. He’s the mason who rebuilds our fallen walls and the contractor who brings back structural integrity to our crumbling foundation.
Bitterness, anger, shame, fear, depression, loss of faith, and guilt can poison our hearts and take away life. We still may be breathing but we’re dead inside. Just as the God who Heals, can provide healing to our broken bodies here on earth, Jehovah Rapha can take our ailing embittered minds, hearts, and souls and restore them to health. As He did with the water at Marah when he made the unpalatable palatable, Jehovah Rapha can transform the bitter in our lives into something bearable.
Christ is the Good Physician. There is no disease He cannot heal; no sin He cannot remove; no trouble He cannot help. He is the Balm of Gilead, the Great Physician who has never yet failed to heal all the spiritual maladies of every soul that has come unto Him in faith and prayer. [James H. Aughey]
Over a period of 3,000 years, ancient Egypt’s pantheon of gods numbered between 1,400 and 2,000. During that time, some faded in prominence and new gods appeared. Often depicted as part human and part animal, Egypt’s gods had names, unique back-stories, and their own domain and expertise. Each god/goddess was responsible for a certain part of daily life, from motherhood to music, record keeping to funerals, and cosmic order to hunting. While the ten plagues God sent Egypt through Moses and Aaron may seem somewhat arbitrary to us in the 21st century, every one of them was a direct attack on one or more Egyptian god. They were the ultimate “smack-down” between God Almighty and Egypt’s deities.
A Latin word, lorica originally meant armor or breastplate. Because of an ancient practice of inscribing a prayer on the armor or shields of knights who then recited the prayer before combat, lorica came to mean a prayer of protection.
When writing about Esther last week, I thought how terrified she must have been when Mordecai asked her to step out of her comfort zone to save the Jews. Even though she was queen, her access to Xerxes was severely limited. Living secluded in a private chamber in the women’s quarters, she didn’t regularly dine with the king. Powerless, she was the one to be summoned rather than the one who did the summoning and she hadn’t been summoned by Xerxes for a month. She was just one of many beautiful women in the king’s harem and perhaps someone else had caught his eye. The previous queen was banished when she defied the king; Esther could expect nothing less if her presence wasn’t welcomed. The young queen had a simple choice: comfort or courage. She chose courage and saved a nation!
Scripture tells us that Jesus had at least six siblings: James, Joses, Simon, Jude, and two unnamed sisters. Can you imagine what it was like being a brother or sister to Jesus? Both his conception and birth were proclaimed by angels, a star announced His birth, and magi from the East presented Him with expensive gifts. It’s tough to top that sort of entrance into the world.
The only two miracles recorded in all four gospels are the resurrection of Jesus and His feeding of the 5,000. Since the gospel writers only told us the number of men at that al fresco meal, Biblical scholars estimate the actual number eating those loaves and fish to be more than double that figure. Perhaps it’s because of the magnitude of that miracle that people often want a logical (meaning earthly) explanation of how Jesus did it and skeptics love to offer their own version of the events.
Devotions of the Heart 