HEBREW WORD – LORD That Healeth [Jehovah-Rapha]

 

LORD That Healeth [Jehovah-Rapha]

 

Yāhweh Rāpa‘

 

After the Exodus and Red Sea crossing, the Israelites found themselves in the wilderness of Shur, where there was no water. When they finally did find water in Marah, it was too bitter to drink. After sweetening the water, God said, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee” (Exo_15:26).

 

The verb healeth is rāpa‘ (H7495), which appears more than sixty times and means not only “to heal and restore health,” but “to make fresh, usable, and fertile.” Lepers, for example, were sometimes healed (Lev_14:3; Lev_14:48), while Abimelech, his wife, and his maidservants were restored to fertility (Gen_20:17). In that great messianic chapter in Isaiah, we read of the spiritual healing He will bring: “With his stripes we are healed” (Isa_53:5).

 

We cannot help but think here of 2Ch_7:14 : “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal [Rāpa‘] their land.” While dispensationally speaking this is a promise given specifically to Israel, practically speaking what would such repentance do for our troubled nation today? After all, Jer_51:8-9 declares that even foreign cities and powers can know God’s healing if they repent. How much healing would result if we called upon God, stopped our worship of self, put prayer back in our schools and God’s commandments back in the courtroom, and turned from our unconscionable sin, such as the murder of the unborn?

 

It is significant that the Septuagint often translates Rāpa‘ with the Greek iaomai (G2390, “to cure, restore”). Peter uses this, in fact, in his partial quotation of Isa_53:5 in 1Pe_2:24. Further, we must “confess [our] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that [we] may be healed” (Jas_5:16) both physically and spiritually. Further still, “The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered [i.e., dismayed sighs that cannot be expressed in words]” (Rom_8:26).

 

Scriptures for Study: Who is being healed in Isa_19:22; Isa_57:18?