Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 235 · August 23
Balm in Gilead
“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”
A line of camels is on the road down to Egypt, loaded with "spicery and balm and myrrh." In Genesis those traders pass a pit with a boy in it, and they buy Joseph on their way. Balm was what Gilead was known for, and every one of Jeremiah's hearers knew you could get it there.
That is why his question is about something other than whether there is any. "Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?" The medicine exists. The chapter has already said where the trouble lies: "they refuse to return," and "no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done?" It also names the bad doctoring that has been going on in the meantime: "they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace." Later Jeremiah says the same kind of thing to Egypt, with the outcome attached: "in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured." Two verses before ours the people cry, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." And Jeremiah's very next words give no answer at all: "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears."
Yet an old spiritual answers him anyway. It sings, "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole." Somebody took Jeremiah's question and turned it into a statement, and they had every right to, because they were singing after the Physician had come. Jesus said, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick," and He said it at a table full of the very people others had written off. Jeremiah was not given that, and his chapter closes on a question.
So here is a blessing on this passage, honest as it is. May you know that the medicine has never run out. May there be people near you who sing that line as a statement while your own chapter still reads like a question. And may you come to the Physician Himself, who still heals the hurt of His people, and heals it more than slightly.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 235 is Ready to Forgive (Psalm 86:5).