The hands of the healer

Jeremiah 8:18–22 ““My comfort is gone from me, sorrow is on me, my heart is sick. Look, the sound of the cry for help of the daughter of my people from a distant land, ‘Is Yahweh not in Zion? Is her king not in her?’ Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with idols of a foreign land?” The harvest has passed, the summer has come to an end, and we have not received help. “Because of the wound of the daughter of my people I am broken down, I mourn, horror has seized me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no healer there? Why, then, has the healing of the daughter of my people not been restored?”

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Return of the King” a character by the name of Ioreth uttered the saying; “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.” What is interesting to note is that Tolkien likely based this saying and the scene in the book on an actual ceremony in England and France where thousands of people would gather to be touched by the king and be healed of their illnesses. From the 11th through the 19th centuries it was believed that a king or queen could heal a disease called scrofula, which was a disease where the bacteria that caused tuberculosis would cause symptoms outside of the lungs.

Balm in Gilead - the Gilroy Garlic Festival. How should the church be known? the balm - zori: The identification of biblical zori with the resin of the Atlantic pistachio tree is supported by historical sources. The tree and its medicinal properties were described by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, Roman philosopher Pliny, and Greek physician Dioscorides. The latter names the city of Petra, the capital of the Nabateans, who were known as traders in perfumes, as another locale for zori:

The resin is brought out of Arabia Petraea…The preferred resin is most clear, white, a glassy color and inclining to an azure [blue], fragrant, and smells like terminthos…Now all resin has a soothing, warming, dispersing, cleansing quality; good for coughs and consumption [wasting disease] taken in syrups (either by itself or with honey), purging what should be purged out of the chest. It is also diuretic, helps digestion, softens the intestines, and is good for retaining hair on the eyebrows…For ears which run with filthy matter it is applied with oil and honey, and it is effective for itching genitals.

The church - his hands

Is there any sick among you - James 5:14 “Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the elders of the church and they should pray over him, anointing him with olive oil in the name of the Lord.”