Jehovah Rapha

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A short introductory note

Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals, is first introduced in the book of Exodus. As you read through the Old Testament, you find that, for the most part, Jehovah Rapha is in the background. While He was recognized as the God who heals, His healing virtue was overshadowed by other tasks that needed His attention.

Coming out of Egypt

What a harrowing time for the Israelites. As they prepared to leave Egypt, it was excitement paired with the ‘can-this-really-be-happening?’ kind of disbelief. It was the physicality of packing up entire households while preparing provisions for a journey of unknown length. It was the tension of wondering if they were actually going to be released from under the Egyptian rule. It was the terror of impending annihilation when it looked like they would all be slaughtered. 

It was intense relief as they barely escaped, and it was euphoric, giddy joy to realize that God was true and had indeed brought them out. They celebrated with songs of triumph about their great Yahweh, creating ballads that we still sing today. It was a dream come true that they had hoped for, as a nation, for over 400 years.

Going forward

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you had no other plans beyond the fruition of that one goal? Then, once it happened, It was almost like you didn’t know what to do next because all of your energy and hope had been put into this one achievement. 

This was the Israelites. They had no vision for anything beyond leaving Egypt behind them. It was Moses who had the vision that God gave him for their journey.

After their miraculous crossing, they did not stay next to the Red Sea, but traveled into the desert. The first day, they must have still been in celebration mode. The second day, they were beginning to get an understanding of their new reality, and by the third day, they were hot and thirsty and mad!

They arrived at Marah looking forward to replenishing their water supplies only to discover that the water was undrinkable. The Bible says that the waters were bitter. This could have meant that they were brackish, or salty, due to the nearness of the Red Sea, or they could have had some other problem. This bitter water at Marah was their first major trial after the Red Sea crossing. 

These waters at Marah have implications to our lives as well.  We can look at this as representative of our lives before and after the cross. The wood of the tree that Moses threw into the water represents the cross of Jesus. The bitter waters beforehand and the sweet waters afterward represent our lives of bitterness before Jesus, and the sweetness of the presence of Jesus afterwards.

Yahweh gives instructions

Even after witnessing the devastation of the Egyptian plagues and the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, the Israelites complained to Moses, seemingly forgetting what God was capable of. God was very patient with them. He knew that this journey was a completely new paradigm in their lives. He realized that they had been living in a hope-deferred mode all of their lives.

Yahweh sovereignly directed Moses to fix the water problem, then He gave them some instructions:

…there he made for them an ordinance, and there he proved (tested) them. Exodus 15:25

Next, God introduced himself as Jehovah Rapha.

God introduces His healing attribute

This title for God, Jehovah Rapha, is first seen in Exodus 15. After Yahweh provided a way to make the water drinkable, He then introduced himself to the entire tribe as Jehovah Rapha, the God who healeth thee.

… If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord [Yahweh] thy God [Elohim], 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 [Yahweh] that healeth thee [Ropheka]. Genesis 15:26

God is addressed as Jehovah Rapha (or Yahweh Ropheka) only in this one place. It is not found anywhere else in the Old Testament, however, the Hebrew word rapha, which means to heal or restore, can be found over 60 times. It is in these descriptions, both of people and of Yahweh, that His healing attribute is clearly seen.

What did Jehovah Rapha promise?

When Yahweh made this promise to the Israelites, He did not unconditionally promise to heal them, but made their healing contingent on their own behavior. This is called a conditional promise and can be found in other places where God makes promises. He said if you will do this, then I will do that:

IF thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord [Yahweh] thy God [Elohim], and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes,

THEN I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians.

What were the diseases that were brought on the Egyptians? Every one of them was a judgement against their gods. So, Yahweh was saying to the Israelites, as long as you worship Me and only Me, you will not fall under the judgement that was brought against these false gods.

It is these judgements that have caused a great deal of confusion about God’s healing attribute.

Before we try to untangle this confusion, let’s look at a few places in the Old Testament where Jehovah Rapha did indeed perform miraculous healings. They were not as frequent as in the time of Jesus, but they were significant in the lives of those who were touched.

Some OT healings by Jehovah Rapha

• The poisoned stew

In the time of Elisha the prophet, there was a famine in the land. Several disciples of the prophets were eating with Elisha, having foraged for herbs in the wilderness. When they ate the stew, they recognized that it was poisonous. Elisha was able to make it harmless. The accounting does not say that Elisha prayed to Yahweh before he healed the stew. This reveals that Jehovah Rapha must have invested a large measure of His healing attribute into Elisha so that he could do this. Jesus walked in this anointing also.

• King Hezekiah was healed

King Hezekiah had a mortal infection. The scripture says that he turned his face to the wall and entreated God. Then God sent his prophet to tell Hezekiah that he would add 15 years to his life.

• Healing from snakebites

Jehovah Rapha healed the Israelites of snakebites in the book of Numbers. This event was actually a foretelling of Jesus on the cross. As the snake was lifted up so that all people could recognize their sin and be healed, so also, Jesus was lifted up on the cross, carrying the sin of us all so that we could live.

The curses of disobedience

In the book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites were specifically warned that disobedience would lead to sicknesses and wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation. 

Obey Yahweh, your Elohim, and faithfully follow all his commands and laws that I am giving you today. If you don’t, all these curses will come to you and stay close to you: Deuteronomy 28:15

From verse 16 to the end of the chapter in verse 64, are listed all of the dread diseases and other results of disobedience.

Let’s look at some examples in the Old Testament where sickness came as a result of disobedience or sin.

• In Numbers 12, Miriam, the sister of Moses, challenged Moses’ authority. God struck her with leprosy so that she became white as snow. She was exiled from the community for seven days, then she was healed. 

• In 2 Chronicles 26, King Uzziah was counted among the good kings of Judah, however, the sin of pride overtook him when he entered the temple to burn incense. This was a duty that was reserved solely for the priests. As the priests rushed in to beg him to stop, leprosy broke out on his forehead. He reigned for 52 years, and the leprosy was with him until his death.

• The Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and placed it in the temple to their god, Dagon. After seven months of plagues, including tumors and rats they returned the Ark, along with a guilt offering of five gold tumors and five gold rats to atone for the five rulers of the Philistines. You can read about this in 1 Samuel 4-6.

Doesn’t sickness as punishment go against everything we’ve been taught about a good God?

In the previous three examples, it looks like the people involved were being punished for what they did. If so, then why did God punish them? Was it because God didn’t like what they were doing? 

If you recall, the plagues brought on the Egyptians were judgements against their gods. Because God is righteousness, there cannot be any unrighteousness in His presence. His commandments to the Israelites to obey His statutes were actually simply instructions about how to remain righteous and thus to remain healthy and avoid trouble. As long as His people avoided unrighteousness, they avoided being judged or having sickness fall on them.

In the three examples above, God did not need to deal out punishment. The sins had already been judged and the judgements were already in place. They were simply reaping the result of the judgement.

Yahweh’s umbrella of protection

Think of it as carrying an umbrella while it is raining. As long as you stay under the umbrella, you will stay dry. The second you step out from under it, you will get wet. Is it because the rain is mad at you or it hates you? No, of course not, the rain is there regardless of whether you stay under the umbrella or step out from under it.

Similarly, God’s judgement was there whether or not the Israelites remained obedient to God or stepped out into sin. If they chose to embrace sin, they were left open to the judgement of that sin. It was obedience to God that kept them out of sin and that protected them from the judgement of sin.

David learned the hard way

God had decreed, in Exodus 30, that whenever a census was taken, that a half-shekel atonement fee, or temple tax, was required for each person to prevent a plague. David sinned when, in 1 Chronicles 21, he took a census without the temple tax.

It was viewed as an act of pride, or reliance on his army instead of on God. Even David’s commanders begged him not to do this. As a result, David came under judgement, and all of Israel with him.

David begged God’s forgiveness and it was given in the form of letting David decide what form his judgement would take: pestilence, war or famine. The judgement was unleashed, nonetheless, and Israel suffered three days of pestilence in which 70,000 died. It was a hard lesson for David that the consequence of his disobedience affected not just himself, but an entire nation.

Healing under the New Covenant

Under the New Covenant, God is still Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals. However, the rules for receiving healing have changed. This is good news for us.

Recall that under the Old Covenant, healing was a conditional blessing. ‘If you do this, then I will bless you.’ But under the New Covenant, healing is freely-available. Not only has healing been made available to all believers through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, but also, we no longer need to have a go-between, or a priest, to go to God for us. He is available to every person.

Healing is now viewed as an integral part of salvation and forgiveness, available to believers through faith rather than by animal sacrifices. 

Healing is no longer conditional because the work has already been done. It is just a matter of receiving it.

Let’s look at the upgrades that the New Covenant brought

 1. Sacrifices: Under the Old Covenant, regular, ongoing animal sacrifices were required. Under the New Covenant, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was a one-time sacrifice that paid for both sin and sickness.

2. The right to be healed: Under the Old Covenant, God’s people who were obedient to His statutes could rightfully claim healing. However, most people recognized that they were not perfectly sinless, so an animal sacrifice was required. But because Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our infirmities, healing is considered a New Covenant right for believers.

3. Direct Access: Under the Old Covenant, people making a sacrifice would have to make their petitions known to the priest who was performing the sacrifice for them so that he could take them to the Lord. Believers can now approach God directly through faith to receive healing, rather than through a mediator or by legalistic obedience.

4. Inner Transformation: The New Covenant gives believers a new heart. We are literally renewed in our spirit man, clean, just as the first man was clean and whole.

If healing is part of the New Covenant, then why isn’t everyone healed?

Healing, like salvation, is faith-based. 

Remember that under the Old Covenant, Mephibosheth had to actively accept the covenant that David and his father, Jonathan, had made. Even though their covenant had been made years before, receiving the results was not automatic. It had to be acknowledged and acted upon.

It is the same with the benefits of the New Covenant. When we receive salvation by faith, we must accept it and physically go through the steps of acceptance.

Because salvation is very well-known and has been repeated again and again with the same results, do you think it took any less faith when you received it than when the first people in the Bible received it?

For many of us, we have heard many testimonies of salvation. Doesn’t the word say that ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God?’ Because of this, our faith has been strengthened towards salvation.

Healing is Faith-Based

Healing is a benefit that was bestowed at the time Jesus ratified the New Covenant with His death on the cross. So, like the judgements of the Old Covenant, which were in already in place at the time the Old Covenant was made, healing has also already been made available.

But healing is also a faith-based benefit, although it is much less well-known than salvation. We do hear testimonies of those who have been miraculously healed, but we also hear of those who did not get healed. We often try to justify those failures in a spiritual way. Have you ever heard any of these justifications:

• God must not want me healed
• God is punishing me
• I must not have enough faith
• I’m not worthy enough to be healed
• It must be God’s will for me to be sick

Think back to healing under the Old Covenant, which we have just studied. Healing was a part of the Old Covenant benefits, but those who were out from under the protection of the covenant were subject to the judgements that had already been given, one of which was sickness. I think that one problem we encounter with healing under the New Covenant is that we get the covenant terms of the two covenants confused with each other.

This is not an accident. God has an enemy, the devil, who wants to keep us from having close fellowship with God. If he can throw enough dust to cause us confusion and doubt as to our healing, then we will continually walk under the Old Covenant as far as healing goes, rather than under the New Covenant.

Also, recall that every person has his/her own will and no other person really knows what that will is. Only God does. If someone you love has determined inside that healing, for whatever reason, is not for him/her, then the only way that will be changed is if the person changes his/her will.

Provisions for healing in the Word

There are other reasons for our lack of good health. Don’t even get me started on the way that we treat our bodies as far as food and drink go, and how we have polluted our environment so that our bodies (which are fearfully and wonderfully made, by the way) are challenged at every turn.

Some ill health may be accidental, but much of it we do to ourselves. It is like standing outside of your house and lobbing stones and boulders at it. You’re going to get dents, broken windows, damage that lets in parasites and pests, and weather damage. No matter how well your house is built, it is going to suffer.

All of that being said, God made provisions in His word for our healing, as you can see from the accompanying scripture verses.

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

1 John 1:2

Jesus was Jehovah Rapha in the flesh

One of the meanings of the Hebrew word, rapha, is Physician. Jesus is often called the Great Physician. Throughout His ministry, He healed the sick, cast out demons and forgave sins. He demonstrated God’s desire to care for His people the way He would have cared right from the beginning if sin had not entered in. 

Jesus demonstrated the fellowship and nearness that God always wanted, walking through the lands and meeting people face to face, fellowshipping with those in need of His ministry.

As he faced the common folk, who recognized their need for Him, he cured their diseases, such as leprosy, blindness, and lameness, and demonstrated his authority over physical infirmity.

As he faced the religious folk, who needed him just as much but did not recognize their need for Him, he spoke of compassion and forgiveness in an effort to reach them.

He was successful to a degree – recall that Joseph of Arimathea, who was probably a member of the Sanhedrin, cared for His body after his death on the cross.

What exactly did Jesus do?

Jesus walked among the people and healed them. How, exactly, did He do this. Let’s look at a few healing instances.

• Jesus touched and spoke

And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Matthew 8:2-3

And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. Mark 1:41-42

• Jesus gave instructions

I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion. Mark 2:11-12

Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other. Matthew 12:13

Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. John 4:50

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. John 5:8

And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way. Mark 10:51-52

Jesus touched or was touched

 And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them. Matthew 1:31

And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him. Luke 22:51

• Jesus congratulated

But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour. Matthew 9:22

And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed… When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.Matthew 8:6-8, 10

The healing attribute in us

Think of all of the people who have gone into health care of some kind. For some it is just a job, but for others, it is a calling. It is the attribute of Jehovah Rapha, which has taken a strong residence within them.

Never underestimate the power of physical care and comfort to those in need. It is nice to desire the miraculous, also, but there is so much that can be offered with a helping hand and kind words.

Desire the supernatural in your life as God leads you. Never underestimate any aspect of Jehovah Rapha in you. 

And as a final parting gift of this very long and involved lesson, remember these wise words: It is easier to stay healthy than it is to get healthy.