Objection: The Word for HEALETH in Psalm 103:3 Means to Heal the SOUL
The Hebrew word rapha is used in Psalm 103:3. The objector claims that this means the healing of the soul, and he cites Jeremiah 3:22 (“I will heal your backslidings”), Psalm 41:4 (“heal my soul”) and Hosea 11:3 (“but they knew not that I healed them”) as “proof” because rapha is used in those verses as well. That doesn’t look like very convincing proof to me.
If you had a family squabble, and your family members reconciled, you could say that their relationships were healed. I would have no problem with that, but that doesn’t prove that the English word healed only applies to broken relationships. If it did, you would just say that everyone was healed; you wouldn’t specify that their relationships were healed.
Likewise, if the word rapha means “heal the soul” as claimed, then Psalm 41:4 is redundant (“soul-heal my soul”). The very fact that “heal my soul” had to be specified in fact demonstrates that the word heal (rapha) by itself does not mean to heal the soul!
Besides, Psalm 103:3 explicitly states that God heals all your diseases! So it is way beyond proper Scripture interpretation to claim that He only “soul-heals” you, or “soul-heals” your diseases when He says plainly that He heals your diseases. That’s so obvious that it takes an intellectual to try to explain it away!
Besides this, there are plenty of other Scriptures containing the word rapha that DO pertain to physical healing. The objector claims that “most” of the rapha occurrences in the Bible refer to healing of the soul. Don’t let other people do your thinking for you. Look at these verses and see what YOU think:
Exodus 15:26: “…I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.”
Genesis 20:7: “…God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants, and they bare children.”
It’s also the word from which we get physician in the Hebrew, as in Genesis 50:2: “And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.” Is this talking about the soul-healers? I doubt it, seeing that soul-healers wouldn’t be of much value if you needed a physical body embalmed. You can’t make a reasonable case that the physicians embalmed Israel’s soul! Also 2 Chronicles 16:12: “And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.” While I assume that foot doctors might have been sole-healers, that’s not the same as soul-healers. Then there is Jeremiah 8:22: “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”
Exodus 21:19: “If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.”
Leviticus 13:18: “The flesh also, in which, even in the skin thereof, was a boil, and is healed”
Leviticus 13:37: “But if the scall be in his sight at a stay, and that there is black hair grown up therein; the scall is healed, he is clean: and the priest shall pronounce him clean.”
Leviticus 14:3: “And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;”
Leviticus 14:48: “And if the priest shall come in, and look upon it, and, behold, the plague hath not spread in the house, after the house was plaistered: then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because the plague is healed.”
Numbers 12:13: “And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.” (This refers to Miriam after she was struck with leprosy.)
Deuteronomy 28:27: “The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.”
Deuteronomy 28:35: “The LORD shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head.”
2 Kings 8:29: “And king Joram went back to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Syria. And Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see Joram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick.”
2 Kings 9:15: “But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria…”
2 Kings 20:5: “Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.”
2 Chronicles 30:20: “And the LORD hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.”
Psalm 6:2: “Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed.”
Psalm 107:20: “He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.”
Isaiah 53:5: “…and with his stripes we are healed.”
Jeremiah 15:18: “Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed?
Jeremiah 30:17: “For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds…”
Jeremiah 33:6: “Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them…”
Jeremiah 51:8: “…take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.”
Ezekiel 34:4: “The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick…”
Hosea 5:13: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.”
I hope that these verses are enough to convince you that rapha does NOT, as the objector asserts, refer primarily to healing of the soul. There are times “heal” could be taken metaphorically, but that does not change the actual meaning of the word itself, which should be quite clear to you from the verses above.