20 Bible Verses About Sickness

Exodus 15:26

“He said, ‘If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.’”

Reflection: The LORD speaks at Marah, three days into the Desert of Shur after the crossing of the Red Sea, where the water was too bitter to drink until Moses threw a piece of wood into it. Verse 25 says the LORD “put them to the test” there, and the promise has conditions: listening, doing what is right and keeping his decrees. The diseases in view are the ones “I brought on the Egyptians,” and the sentence ends by naming God as the one who heals.

Psalm 103:2-3

“Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,”

Reflection: The psalm, headed “Of David,” is addressed to the speaker’s own soul, and the benefits it tells him not to forget begin with forgiveness and healing in one line. The list goes on to a life redeemed “from the pit” and youth “renewed like the eagle’s” (verses 4-5). Later the same psalm says God “remembers that we are dust” and that “the life of mortals is like grass” (verses 14-15).

Isaiah 53:5

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

Reflection: Isaiah 53 describes “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (verse 3), and the healing in this verse comes after transgressions and iniquities and the punishment laid on him. Where the New Testament takes up the chapter’s healing language, Matthew 8:17 uses verse 4 for Jesus’ cures, and 1 Peter 2:24 quotes “by his wounds you have been healed” in a sentence about sin: Christ “bore our sins” on the cross “so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.”

Psalm 6:2-3

“Have mercy on me, LORD, for I am faint; heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, LORD, how long?”

Reflection: The speaker asks for mercy while his body gives way, and the question “How long?” gets no answer within these lines. Verse 5 gives God a reason to spare him: “Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?” By verse 9 the psalm has turned: “The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer.”

Psalm 30:2

“LORD my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.”

Reflection: Psalm 30 gives thanks after the healing has happened. The next verse describes how close the illness came to death: “You, LORD, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.” Verse 9 recalls the prayer he made while ill, with the same argument as Psalm 6: “Will the dust praise you?”

Psalm 41:3

“The LORD sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.”

Reflection: The promise belongs to the people of verse 1, “those who have regard for the weak”: the one who cares for the weak is sustained by the LORD when ill. In the following verse the speaker turns to his own illness and ties it to his sin: “Have mercy on me, LORD; heal me, for I have sinned against you.”

2 Kings 20:5

“Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the LORD.’”

Reflection: Hezekiah was “ill and at the point of death,” and Isaiah had just told him, “you will not recover” (verse 1). Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, prayed and wept, and before Isaiah had left the middle court he was sent back with this answer and a promise of fifteen more years of life. Isaiah then had a poultice of figs applied to the king’s boil, “and he recovered” (verse 7).

Matthew 8:16-17

“When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.’”

Reflection: That evening follows the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, whose fever left when Jesus touched her hand (verses 14-15). Matthew reads the healings as the fulfilment of Isaiah 53:4. Where the NIV’s Isaiah 53:4 reads “he took up our pain and bore our suffering,” Matthew’s quotation speaks of “our infirmities” and “our diseases” and applies the prophecy to bodily sickness.

Mark 5:34

“He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’”

Reflection: Jesus was on his way to the house of Jairus, whose daughter was dying (verses 22-23), when a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years touched his cloak in the crowd. She “had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors” and spent all she had, “yet instead of getting better she grew worse” (verse 26). The bleeding stopped at once, and when she came forward “trembling with fear” (verse 33), Jesus called her “Daughter” and credited her faith.

John 9:2-3

“His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’”

Reflection: The disciples take it for granted that blindness from birth must be punishment for someone’s sin, either the man’s or his parents’. Jesus rejects both answers and names a purpose instead, then makes mud, puts it on the man’s eyes and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam, “and came home seeing” (verses 6-7). In Psalm 41:4 a sick man ties his own illness to his sin; here Jesus denies any such connection for this man.

Matthew 25:36

“I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Reflection: In Jesus’ account of the Son of Man judging “all the nations” (verse 32), looking after the sick is one of the acts the King counts as done for him. The righteous ask when they ever saw him sick, and he answers, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (verse 40).

James 5:14-15

“Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up.”

Reflection: The sick person is the one who calls the elders, and the elders pray over him and anoint him with oil “in the name of the Lord.” The verse goes on: “If they have sinned, they will be forgiven,” and verse 16 widens the instruction to the whole church: “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” The word for sick in verse 14 is astheneo, to be weak; in verse 15 it is kamno, which also means to be weary.

Job 2:7-8

“So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.”

Reflection: Job’s sickness is the second blow of the book, after the loss of his children and livestock. Just before it, the LORD calls Job “blameless and upright” and says Satan incited him to ruin Job “without any reason” (verse 3). His wife tells him, “Curse God and die!” and he answers, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (verses 9-10).

Philippians 2:27

“Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.”

Reflection: Epaphroditus was the messenger the Philippians sent “to take care of my needs,” Paul writes (verse 25), and he fell ill while doing it. He was distressed that the church had heard about the illness (verse 26). Paul calls his recovery God’s mercy to both of them, and verse 30 says he “almost died for the work of Christ.”

2 Timothy 4:20

“Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus.”

Reflection: Among the closing greetings of the letter, Paul mentions without further comment that he left Trophimus behind ill. The verb is astheneo, the same word James 5:14 uses for the sick person who calls the elders.

1 Timothy 5:23

“Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.”

Reflection: Paul’s advice to Timothy about his “frequent illnesses” is to stop drinking only water and take a little wine for his stomach. It stands beside the fig poultice Isaiah ordered for Hezekiah as a physical treatment for a physical complaint.

2 Corinthians 12:9

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

Reflection: Paul had pleaded three times for his “thorn in my flesh” to be taken away (verse 8), and this was the answer. The passage does not say what the thorn was; Paul calls it “a messenger of Satan, to torment me” and says it was given to keep him from becoming conceited (verse 7). Paul does not say the thorn was ever removed, and verse 10 lists what he now delights in: “weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.”

Romans 8:18

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Reflection: Paul’s “present sufferings” include the body. Verse 23 says believers “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies,” and the whole creation groans with them, waiting to be “liberated from its bondage to decay” (verse 21).

1 Corinthians 15:42-43

“So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”

Reflection: Paul is answering the question of verse 35, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” The body is sown perishable and weak and raised imperishable and in power. Later in the chapter Paul quotes Isaiah 25:8: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (verse 54).

Revelation 21:4

“‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Reflection: John hears these words from “a loud voice from the throne” as the new Jerusalem comes down (verses 2-3). Pain is listed with death, mourning and crying as belonging to “the old order of things.” The first line takes up Isaiah 25:8: “The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces.”