Here I analyze all the references to healing in the books of Moses. Jewish and Christian traditional belief is that the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament), were written by Moses on God’s direction. These five books are also called the Pentateuch, which simply means “five books.” Many biblical scholars believe that these five books of the Bible came to completion during the Babylonian captivity of the kingdom of Judah (c. 6th century BC), and were based on earlier manuscripts and oral traditions, and final manuscripts written during the 5th century BC.
Healing in the book of Genesis
Abraham was living temporarily in Gerar, a Philistine town and district in what is today south-central Israel. Abraham lied and said that Sarah his wife was his sister. Apparently, he was afraid that Abimelech, king of Gerar, would take Sarah as his wife and kill him. So, Abimelech took Sarah as his wife (he had other wives and concubines). In a dream God came to Abimelech and told him He would kill him because Sarah was another man’s wife. Abimelech, who had not yet touched Sarah, argues with God that He cannot kill the innocent because he was told Sarah was Abraham’s sister, so God tells him in the dream that it was Himself who kept him from sinning (by having sex with another man’s wife). So, in the dream He tells Abimelech to return Sarah, because Abraham was a prophet, and he would pray for him and he would live, but if he did not return her, he would die together with his household (Genesis 20: 1-7).
Abimelech got up early in the morning and called Abraham, who tells him that he has not completely lied when he said Sarah was his sister because she was his half-sister, daughter of his father but not of his mother. Abimelech, scared to death of his encounter with God in his dream, took sheep and oxen and male and female slaves, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him as God had commanded in the dream. He also told Abraham to settle wherever he pleased in the land. Later, Abraham prayed to God on behalf of Abimelech, and God healed him and his household, and they were again able to give birth to children. The Lord had previously closed the wombs of all the women in Abimelech’s household because of Sarah (Genesis 20: 8-18). This is the first recorded healing in the Bible. We also see that under the Old Covenant, God did interfere directly in human affairs by causing disease, in this case by making all the women in Abimelech’s household unable to conceive and have children.
Healing in the book of Exodus
Moses talked to God at the burning bush and complained to Him that he was slow of speech (and therefore could not speak to the Israelites) (Exodus 4: 10). The Lord responded, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? (Exodus 4: 11)” Under the Old Covenant, God did intervene in human affairs and gave us hearing and sight, or not (full health, or lack thereof).
After the Lord provided drinkable water for the Israelites, by transforming bitter water at Marah (somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula), He made an ordinance for them: “If you will diligently listen and pay attention to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and listen to His commandments, and keep all His precepts and statutes, then I will not put on you any of the diseases which I have put on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you (Exodus 15: 22-26).” Here the Lord declares that He is willing to heal us (or keep us healthy) if we abide in Him. This is the first biblical promise of divine health from God for those that follow and abide in Him.
When God orders the conquest of the land of Israel after he gets the Israelites out of Egypt, he made several promises to them. Among them, he promised that if they served Him, He would bless their bread and their water and He would remove sickness from their midst. He also promised that there would be no one miscarrying or barren in their land, and He would fulfill the number of their days (Exodus 23: 25-26).
Healing in the book of Leviticus
In Leviticus 26, God spells out the blessings that come from keeping His statues and obeying His commandments and the curse that comes on us if we do not. If we disobey and ignore Him, He will appoint over us sudden terror, consumption (a wasting disease, especially pulmonary tuberculosis) and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to languish (Leviticus 26:14-16), obviously referring to both physical and mental diseases. The way I understand it is that God does not necessarily dish out diseases on the wicked but rather, as He removes the blessing and protection which He imparts on those who faithfully obey Him, they are subject to the curse and authority of the enemy that reigns in the world since the fall of mankind.
Healing in the book of Numbers
In Numbers chapter 12, Miriam and Aaron doubted God by questioning if He was only talking to Moses. The Lord summoned them together with Moses to the tent of meeting (tabernacle), where He appeared as a pillar of cloud. There, He told them that He only talked face to face with Moses, because of his faithfulness. The Lord was angered, and He departed.
As He left, Miriam became leprous. I understand this passage as a central theme in the Bible: when God leaves you to your own destiny because of your lack of faith, you are susceptible to evil. Aaron asked Moses to not let the Lord abandon them. Moses cried out to God for Miriam’s healing. God tells Moses to confine her outside of the camp for seven days, after which she will be healed.
In chapter 25, the men of Israel began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods (Numbers 25: 1-2). God orders Moses to gather the leaders of the people and kill the idolaters, to turn away God’s anger (Numbers 25: 4). Abruptly, the scene shifts to an Israelite man, Zimri, who brings a Midianite woman into the camp right in the sight of Moses when the people were weeping. Phinehas, a grandson of Aaron, then follows the man into a tent with a spear and thrusts the spear through both the man and woman. We are then told that a plague—which had killed 24,000—then ceased (Numbers 25: 6-9). The writer does not say when this plague began but, in my view, it started when the Israelite men started associating with Moabite women and worshiping their gods. Again, the message is that while the Lord does not cause disease directly, we are susceptible to it when we abandon His ways.
God then tells Moses that Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, has turned His anger away from the Israelites and therefore makes a covenant of peace with him (Numbers 25: 10-13). Notice that God is not angered with Phinehas for executing a man and a woman, but instead gave him a covenant of peace.
The Israelites are getting ready to enter the promised land, and on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho, the Lord tells Moses to drive out all the inhabitants of Canaan, destroying all their images and their idols. Then He warns them that if they do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those they allow to remain will become barbs in their eyes and thorns in their sides. They will give them trouble in the land where they will live (Numbers 33: 52-56). Why is this important? For many reasons, but also because “thorns in their sides” are obviously problems, troubles, not actual thorns in their flesh. In the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul mentions the famous “thorn in my flesh.” He pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away but was denied (2 Corinthians 12: 7-8). People have asked themselves if Paul’s thorn in the flesh was sickness that God never healed. Some have interpreted it and have taught in the church to the effect that some believers will never get healed because God will be using their sickness for whatever good purpose.
The same concept of “thorn in the flesh” as problems or troubles is given in Joshua 23: 13 (King James Version), “Know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.” One thing is clear: that we need to be on God’s side.
Healing in the book of Deuteronomy
Moses tells the people of Israel that when he spoke with God face to face in the fire of the mountain, God gave him what we now know as the Ten Commandments. He tells them to be careful to do what the Lord has commanded; to walk in obedience to all that the Lord has commanded them, so that they may live, prosper, and prolong their days in the land that they will possess (Deuteronomy 5: 32-33). Here Moses tells us that there is a promise of long life (and therefore of health) as well as of prosperity to those of us that follow God’s commandments and decrees.
This is repeated in the next chapter, when Moses again told them that if they feared the Lord, if they lived by keeping all his decrees and commands that he gave them, they would enjoy long life (Deuteronomy 6: 1-2).
In Deuteronomy 7, God gives the Israelites several promises if they listen to His judgements and kept them. He said that He would take away from them all sickness; and He would not subject them to any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which they knew about, but He would impose them on all those peoples who hated them (Deuteronomy 7: 15).
In Deuteronomy 28, Moses listed the blessings the Israelites would have if they obeyed God’s commands and the curses they would suffer if they disobeyed them. He said that if they did not obey, the Lord would plague them with diseases, specifically the Lord would strike them with wasting disease (cancer?), with fever and inflammation (infectious diseases?), with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, and those plagues would continue until they perished (Deuteronomy 28: 20-22). Although it is not stated in the blessings section, this passage tells me that if the Israelites obeyed the Lord’s commands, they would enjoy good health. Otherwise, there would be no difference between the blessed and the cursed state. He went on saying that the Lord would afflict them with the boils that had affected the Egyptians as well as with tumors, festering sores, and the itch, without cure, madness, blindness, and confusion of the mind (Deuteronomy 28: 27-28). And it goes on: the bad things they would see will drive them mad, their knees and legs would be affected with painful boils that could not be cured, spreading from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads (Deuteronomy 28: 34-35).
The Lord would send fearful plagues on the Israelites and their descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses (Deuteronomy 28: 59). Since the Hebrews did severely disobey the laws, it seems to me that this disease curse on their descendants continued for the rest of the Old Covenant. Moses added that God would also bring on them all the dreaded diseases of Egypt and they would stay with them. Now, that is a long list of warnings! Just in case they did not get it, he added that the Lord would also bring on them every kind of sickness and disaster not mentioned here, until they were destroyed (Deuteronomy 28: 60-61).
In Deuteronomy, God lays down life and blessings, death and curses, and told the Israelites what would happen to them if they turned away and were not obedient. One thing He declares. is that they would not live long in the land they were crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. Conversely, they would live long—obviously with good health—if they were obedient (Deuteronomy 30: 17-20).
Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo that is opposite Jericho (Deuteronomy 34: 1). There the Lord showed him the land which He swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He let him see it with his eyes, but he did not let him go over there (Deuteronomy 34: 4). Moses died there and although he was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, Scripture tells us that “his eyesight was not dim, nor his natural strength had abated (Deuteronomy 34: 7).” So, Moses was healthy when he died. The message here is that we can die in health; we do not have to be sick to die. Amen!
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