Objection: Psalm 103:3 Is a Parallelism for Forgiven Sins and Does Not Mean That God Heals All Physical Diseases
A parallelism…wow, this sounds like an objection from a seminary professor. Which it was.
He wrote to me emphatically that Hebrew poetry is full of “parallelisms” where the last half of the verse echoes the first half rather than expressing an independent thought. (So far, so good, I would agree with that.) Therefore (he said), Psalm 103:3’s statement about healing of diseases does not mean physical diseases – it means spiritual diseases, because the author was just saying that God forgives your sins in two different ways.
The statement about Hebrew poetry is generally correct, but it most certainly does not apply in the context of Psalm 103:3. Although the same objector also said that “Forget not all his benefits” was a parallelism for “Bless the Lord, O my soul” in verse 2, I don’t see it – do you? This is another aspect of Hebrew poetry that he didn’t mention. The second phrase can add to or build onto the first phrase rather than merely restating it in different words. Of course, Psalms abounds with stanzas that are not poetic in either sense.
You basically have to have a predisposition to explain away healing to avoid the immediate context of Psalm 103:3: “Forget not all his benefits...Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” You really have to over-spiritualize things to claim that the good things are spiritual and that your youth is spiritual. No, God’s benefits include physical ones – including all the ones listed in this Psalm. Your spirit is eternal and does not “age,” so your youth being renewed MUST be physical, not spiritual.
The word “diseases” unquestionably refers to real diseases in the Hebrew; the objection is that this is a metaphor in this verse. (The Hebrew word for diseases in Psalm 103:3 is tachaluw, which is translated sicknesses, diseases, sick and in one case grievous referring to how someone would die, probably also a reference to sickness.) I find it interesting that the same people who argue that “thorn in the flesh” must be taken literally instead of as a figure of speech then turn around and say that anything that promises healing is only a metaphor (or a parallelism)! I guess that you can get so wrapped up in human traditions that your brain gets parallelized.
If you want to wipe this objection away in your mind, just click through all the Old Testament healing promises God made and figure out if you think that He meant “spiritual sicknesses” in them. What are spiritual sicknesses, anyway? Can anyone name one? Paul lists works of the flesh, but these are just that – works of the flesh, not sicknesses, regardless of what the 12-step people try to tell you. The Bible does not name any “spiritual diseases” anyway, which is why there is no such thing as “spiritual healing,” as proved elsewhere in this book.
Perhaps the professor has been used to accepting AA lies about this. Sins and diseases are two separate issues. Sin leads to disease and disease is a known judgment for sin as part of the Law’s curse, but to claim that sins and diseases are really the same thing in “parallel talk” goes farther than any rational reader can go. Lawbreakers under the Law of Moses could be punished for sin by being punished with disease. But they were never punished for disease the way you can punished for sin. Getting a cold is not a moral failure, but sin is. These terms are way too far apart to be parallelisms for each other!
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