Not "Heal," but "Serve"
I found this shocking when I discovered it. And the more research I did, the more surprising it became.
The Bible’s English translation is strongly slanted to emphasize the idea that Jesus healed the sick. I am not suggesting that he didn’t heal people, because he did, but simply that this impression wasn’t nearly as important in Jesus’s time. We have this impression because Greek words that don’t mean “heal” are translated as “heal.”
Did Jesus ever use the Greek word that means “heal?” No. It seems that he makes a point of avoiding it and emphasizing different lessons from his healing that are lost in translation. We get a skewed view of Jesus’s message and the point of his command to “heal the sick” because the Bible translates three (at least) different Greek verbs as “to heal.” This confuses a lot of the Gospel story.
Here is a fun fact. The Greek words that Jesus used that are translated as “heal,” are never translated as “heal” in any other part of the New Testament. Paul, Peter, and the rest never use these words. They preferred to use the Greek word that really meant “heal,” discussed toward the end of this article. First, let us look at what Jesus really said and what it meant.
The Greek Words
To know what we are talking about, we must look at the Greek verbs translated as “heal.” What started me in this research was Luke 10:9. This verse is part of the instructions he gives the seventy followers as he sends them out to visit towns where he will speak.
NIV: Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’
This seems a straightforward command, but it makes it appear as though he had given them all the power to heal. However, this is not the case. The Greek verb he used is therapeuo (θεραπεύετε) and it doesn’t mean “heal.” As you may notice, it is the source of our word “therapy.” It means to "be an attendant, “do service", and "treat medically." When someone acts on themselves, it means to "take care of oneself."
So, what did Jesus tell his followers to do?
Listeners Heard: And attend those sickly in it, and tell them it has neared to you, this realm of the Divine.
This is something we can all do, even though we lack any special powers to heal. If they had any knowledge of medicine, they might go further and treat the sick medically, but most people at the time had very basic skill in treating sickness. Most of them heard what we should hear today: take care of those who are sick. Give them attention. This is something everyone can do and Jesus commanded us to do it.
Jesus only uses therapeuo in five verses. In every case, it is translated as “heal,” but it always makes more sense if translated as “attend” or “treat medically.” In one case, where he asks the Pharisees if it is allowed to treat people medically in the Sabbath. In that story, Jesus does heal the person involved, but the point is that good things can result from any of us attending people who are sick on the Sabbath. Otherwise, the entire story is about him, not us, because only he has the power to heal. However, it is also a command to future generations to learn more about medicine, which we have.
The Second Greek Word
Reading English translations of the Bible, we think that Jesus says to the people that he has cured in a number of verses that their faith healed them. A good example is Mark 10:52:
Since Jesus is talking to a blind man who he has just cured, it is easy to believe that Jesus is talking about the healing, but he wasn’t doing that. Here the “healed” is the Greek verb, sozo (σῶσαι), which means to "save from death," to "keep alive," and to “rescue.” To cure blindness does not save people from physical death, so Jesus is referring to another type of death. Unlike therapeuo, it is seldom translated as “heal.” It is usually translated as “save” as in the idea of “Jesus saves.” Out of the twenty-five verses that Jesus uses, it is only translated as “heal” (or, in the KJV, “made whole”) in the three verses where Jesus heals someone.
Listeners Heard: Go away. This trust of yours has saved you.
Again, this focus on healing is misleading as far as Jesus’s general message. He wasn’t telling us that our faith can physically heal us. He was saying something more important: our trust in him and his Father can rescue us from death. The New Testament frequently uses sozo outside of the Gospels, but it is never translated as “heal.” As we can see, translating it as “save” makes sense in all these verses and is more consistent with Jesus’s message about life beyond death.
The Real Greek Word for Heal
So, are there no words in Greek that mean “to heal?” Of course. The word is iaomai (ἰάομαι). It means to “heal” and “cure.” And iaomai is used in the New Testament as well as the Gospels, not only to describe Jesus’s healing people but his apostles doing so as well. Still, this word is not used frequently, only twenty-six times.
However, iaomai has a surprise as well. It means “to heal” in the present and other tenses, except the imperfect tense, which describes an action in the past that is incomplete. In that form iaomai means to “attempt to cure” or “heal.” In other words, it is used to describe and unsuccessful attempt at healing.
Does Jesus ever attempt to heal where it doesn’t work? According to Luke, he does. There are two such verses:
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