The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 2 — Section 351

Ver. 3.-God the Healer of disease. Though this psalm is one of the most familiar, both its auLhorship and its particular vccasion are quite unknown. Early in the psalm this text comes. It is part of a revie1v of God's personal mercies to the psalmist, but it is doubtful whether the psalmist reforred to times of bodily disease and bodily healing, or to the soul,..diseases which answer to "iniquities." In view of the way in which Eastern poets loved to repeat their thought with slightly altered phraseology, it is quite possible that the text may read, "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy soul-diseases-those soul-conditions of frailty and infirmity, out of which iniquities come." But, however that may be, it is certainly true that God is the Healer or all men's diseases. The work of the physician must always be traced back to the Divine Physician, who alone has proved to be the recuperative force in human vitality. God has healed us again and again through the agency of the doctor and the medicine. L WHAT IS SAID Al30UT HEN's BICKNESSEB IN THE OLD TESTAMENT? Abraham and Isaac died of sheer old age. So indeed did Jacob, but there is a fuller reference to his ending. For all that appears in the record, neither the patriarchs 1;or their families suffered any sioknesses during their lives. Evidently, these experiences of Eickness were not then seen in their relation w character, and so there was no need to leave any narratives concerning them. Sickness is reckoned with under the Mosaic system, Lut in a ~·ery peculia,r way. It was treated as an outward sign and conse- quence of sin; both the sick person ·and those who tended him being treated as "unclean." To lia:.it this rule because, in its working, it occasioned very serioull family and social disturbance, one particular form of disease-that most typical form of disease, leprosy-wa.s taken as the representative of all forms, and the law of. the "uuclean" was strictly enforced in relation to it. Judaism never suggests the idea that character is cultured by the experience of sickne~s; and-so even its priests and Levites offer no example of tending the sick poor. Sickness, in the old economy, served its purpose simply as the outward sign of God'~ judgment on sin. When Jo~'s friends came to comfort him, they could think of no other view of sickness than th!s, though Job felt sure that there must be a higher meaning, if only be cou_ld reach 1t, In the historical books the references to sickness-other than great pestilences-are very brief. One king suffered from internal disease, and one had the ~out, but there ii; only one instance in which any details of a sickness are given, and in that ca~e the relation of it to character first clearly appears. Hezekiah, in the middle of _his reign, l,ut before any son and 1-.eir was born to him, was smitten down with a bad krnd l'B, CIII, 1-22.] Tm; BOOK OF PSALMS. 3!)1