III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CODE
3. PERMANENCE OF HEALING GIFTS IN THE CHURCH
There is abundant evidence that in the early centuries the gifts of healing were still claimed and practiced within the church (Justin, Apol. ii.6;
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. ii. 32, 4; Tertullian, Apol. xxiii; Origen, Contra Celsum, vii.4). The free exercise of these gifts gradually ceased, partly, no doubt, through loss of the early faith and spirituality, but partly through the growth of an ascetic temper which ignored Christ’s gospel for the body and tended to the view that pain and sickness are the indispensable ministers of His gospel for the soul. All down the history of the church, however, there have been notable personalities (e.g. Francis of Assisi, Luther, Wesley) and little societies of earnest Christians (e.g. the
Waldenses, the early Moravians and Quakers) who have reasserted Christ’s
gospel on its physical side as a gospel for sickness no less than for sin, and claimed for the gift of healing the place Paul assigned to it among the gifts of the Spirit. In recent years the subject of Christian healing has risen into importance outside of the regularly organized churches through the activity of various faith-healing movements. That the leaders of these movements have laid hold of a truth at once Scriptural and scientific there can be little doubt, though they have usually combined it with what we regard as a mistaken hostility to the ordinary practice of medicine. It is worth remembering that with all his faith in the spiritual gift of healing and personal experience of its power, Paul chose Luke the physician as the companion of his later journeys; and worth noticing that Luke shared with the apostle the honors showered upon the missionaries by the people of Melita whom they had cured of their diseases (Acts 28:10). Upon the modern church there seems to lie the duty of reaffirming the reality and permanence of the primitive gift of healing, while relating it to the scientific practice of medicine as another power ordained of God, and its natural ally in the task of diffusing the Christian gospel of health.
LITERATURE.
Hort, Christian Ecclesia, chapter x; A.T. Schofield, Force of Mind, Unconscious Therapeutics; E. Worcester and others, Religion and Medicine; HJ, IV, 3, p. 606; The Expositor T, XVII, 349, 417.
J. C. Lambert HEALTH
<helth> ([µlov;, shalom], [h[;Wvy], yeshu`ah], [tWap]ri, riph’uth];
[hk;Wra}, ‘arukhah]; [swthri>a, soteria], [uJgiai>nw, hugiaino]): Shalom is part of the formal salutation still common in Palestine. In this sense it is used in Gen 43:28; 2 Sam 20:9; the stem word means “peace,” and is used in many varieties of expression relating to security, success and good bodily health. Yeshu`ah, which specifically means deliverance or help, occurs in the refrain of Ps 42:11; 43:5, as well as in Ps 67:2; in the American Standard Revised Version it is rendered “help.” Riph’uth is literally, “healing,” and is found only in Prov 3:8. Marpe’ also means healing of the body, but is used in a figurative sense as of promoting soundness of mind and moral character in Prov 4:22; 12:18; 13:17; 16:24, as also in Jer 8:15, where the Revised Version (British and American)
renders it “healing.” ‘Arukhah is also used in the same figurative sense in Isa 58:8; Jer 8:22; 30:17; 33:6; literally means “repairing or restoring”; it is the word used of the repair of the wall of Jerusalem by Nehemiah (chapter 4).
The word “health” occurs twice in the New Testament: in Paul’s appeal to his shipmates to take food (Acts 27:34), he says it is for their soteria, literally, “safety”; so the American Standard Revised Version, the King James Version “health.” The verb hugianino is used in 3 Jn 1:2, in the apostle’s salutation to Gaius.
Alexander Macalister HEAP
<hep> ([hm;re[}, `aremah], [lG”, gal], [dne, nedh], [lTe, tel]): “Heap”
appears
(1) in the simple sense of a gathering or pile, as the translation of
`aremah, a “heap,” in Ruth 3:7 of grain; Neh 4:2 of stones; in 2 Ch 31:6, etc., of the tithes, etc.; of chomer (boiling up), a “heap”; in Ex 8:14 of frogs; of gal, a “heap”; in Job 8:17 of stones.
(2) As indicating “ruin,” “waste,” gal (2 Ki 19:25; Job 15:28; Isa 25:2;
37:26; Jer 9:11; 51:37); me`i (Isa 17:1); `i (Ps 79:1; Jer 26:18; Mic 1:6;
3:12); tel, “mound,” “hillock,” “heap” (Dt 13:16; Josh 8:28; Jer 30:18 the King James Version; 49:2).
(3) Of waters, nedh, “heap,” “pile” (Ex 15:8; Josh 3:13,16; Ps 33:7;
78:13); chomer (Hab 3:15, “the heap of mighty waters,” the Revised Version margin “surge”).
(4) A cairn, or heap of stones
(a) over the dead body of a dishonored person, gal (Josh 7:26; 8:29; 2 Sam 18:17);
(b) as a witness or boundary-heap (Gen 31:46 f, Gal`edh (Galeed) in Hebrew, also mitspah, “watch tower,” Yeghar-Sahadhutha’ (Jegar- sahadutha) in Aramaic, both words meaning “the heap of witness”; see Gen 31:47,49 the Revised Version (British and American)).
(5) As a way mark, tamrurim, from tamar, “to stand erect” (Jer 31:21 the King James Version, “Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps,” the Revised Version (British and American) “guide-posts,” a more likely translation).
“To heap” represents various single words: chathah, “to take,” “to take hold of,” with one exception, applied to fire or burning coals (Prov 25:22,
“Thou writ heap coals of fire upon his head,” “Thou wilt take coals of fire (and heap them) on his head”); caphah, “to add” (Dt 32:23); tsabhar, “to heap up” (Hab 1:10); kabhats, “to press together” (with the fingers or hand) (Hab 2:5); rabhah, “to multiply” (Ezek 24:10); episoreuo, “to heap up upon” (2 Tim 4:3, they “will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts”); soreuo, “to heap up” (Rom 12:20, “Thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head”); thesaurizo, “to lay up” (as treasure) (Jas 5:3 the King James Version, “Ye have heaped treasure together,” the Revised Version (British and American) “laid up”); tsabhar, “to heap up,” “to heap” or
“store up” (Job 27:16, “silver”; Ps 39:6, “riches”; Zec 9:3, “silver,”); sum, sim “to place,” “set,” “put” (Job 36:13 the King James Version, “The hypocrites in heart heap up wrath,” the Revised Version (British and American) “They that are godless in heart lay up anger”). In Jdg 15:16 we have chamor, chamorothayim, “with the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,” the Revised Version margin “heap, two heaps”; one of Samson’s sayings; chamor means “an ass,” chomer “a heap.”
For “heap up words” (Job 16:4), the Revised Version (British and American) has “join together”; for “shall be a heap” (Isa 17:11), “fleeth away,” margin “shall be a heap”; “heap” for “number” (Nah 3:3); the English Revised Version “heap of stones” for “sling,” margin as the King James Version and the American Standard Revised Version (Prov 26:8);
“in one heap” for “upon a heap” (Josh 3:16); “he heapeth up (dust)” for
“they shall heap” (Hab 1:10).
W. L. Walker HEART
<hart> ([ble, lebh], [bb;le, lebhabh]; [kardi>a, kardia]): The different senses in which the word occurs in the Old Testament and the New Testament may be grouped under the following heads: