Is there no balm in Gilead?

'Is there no balm in Gilead?' Jeremiah 8:22

I've been down various internet rabbit holes this week after this Bible verse floated into my head, and as I watch the news it seems a very appropriate verse for the times we find ourselves in. 

So what does the Bible verse mean? First off, Gilead was a real place, and I don't mean the dystopian hellscape of The Handmaid's Tale. Gilead, so Wiki tells me, was 'the ancient, historic, biblical name of the mountainous northern part of the region of Transjordan. The region is bounded in the west by the Jordan River, in the north by the deep ravine of the river Yarmouk and the region of Bashan, and in the southwest by what were known during antiquity as the "plains of Moab", with no definite boundary to the east. In some cases, "Gilead" is used in the Bible to refer to all the region east of the Jordan River. Gilead is situated in modern-day Jordan, corresponding roughly to the Irbid, Ajloun, Jerash and Balqa Governorates.' So if you place it on a map, it's the area of Jordan immediately east of the West Bank today.

Map of Gilead 

And the balm of Gilead was a well known but rare perfume used medicinally back in the ancient days, which came from the Gilead region. You'll remember your school nativities, when the wise men brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? Well, from what I gather if they had also brought the balm of Gilead it wouldn't have been out of place in the list of princely gifts.  I can't find any references to it having any specific medical use these days, but oh, wouldn't it have been lovely if it did? An ancient medicine now found to be cure for cancer, or something equally amazing? Instead from what I can see it's used to treat some urinary tract diseases, and might be antibacterial, but has no properties not found elsewhere.

Once the Bible was translated into English back in 1611 (the King James Authorised version anyway - there were earlier translations) the translated phrase 'Balm of Gilead' came into common parlance as a term for a general panacea, or cure all. It's not a term used much these days, but I knew somewhere in the back of my head what it meant so I must have heard it somewhere over the years.

And then we get to it's more common meaning these days, well, common in the Christian community anyway, and that's as a cure for the soul, which for Christians means Jesus. 

So why is the name of an ancient and not particularly useful medicine now used to describe a soul cure, and to refer to Jesus?

Well, the first reason is found in the full passage I quoted at the start from Jeremiah (which is in the old Testament, so pre-Jesus). The full passage of 8:22 reads 'Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?' (New International Version). 

Very briefly, and I am by no means an expert and am summarising a lot here, Jeremiah was a prophet, and got a message from God which he passed on to the people of the southern kingdom (which was known as Judea and which would have been around where Jerusalem is today - back then there were two Jewish countries, Israel and Judea) who were in exile at the time in Babylon (which was roughly where modern day Iraq is). The Judeans weren't behaving themselves, so God was giving them a telling off and telling them to sort themselves out. Verse 22 is a question, asking is there no medicine to heal God's people.

So for Christians, who believe that Jesus came to save everyone, it stands to reason that Jesus is that Balm of Gilead, the doctor for our souls, and is the cure Jeremiah spoke of. And so, the symbolic meaning of the Balm of Gilead emerged.

Personally, and I have nothing to back this up, but I think it has become such a popular phrase in Christian communities because there is an absolutely lovely African American spiritual called 'There is a Balm in Gilead'.

The lyrics -

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul

Sometimes I feel discouraged

And deep I feel the pain

In prayers the holy spirit

Revives my soul again

There is a balm in Gilead

If you can't pray like Peter

If you can't be like Paul

Go home and tell your neighbour

He died to save us all

There isn't any evidence in the historical record of the song before a version of it in 1854, but I like to think of the Black slaves singing it. I imagine them having taken ownership of the religion of their oppressors, and in a world where they had no power and almost no agency, they found spiritual freedom through the Balm of Gilead.

Link to song https://youtu.be/8fcMxI_6xsk?si=kz0tRIWWwi_fSJD3

Moving on to the modern day, and I find my soul troubled, as I'm sure so many of us do, by the current geopolitical situation. We are essentially in a Cold War with Russia via Ukraine. Tensions rise and fall and rise again with China. Sudan is in the middle of a civil war and on the brink of collapse and starvation. I'm not sure whether Myanmar is technically in a civil war, but if there aren't no one's told the Generals that, and they practice mass imprisonment and genocide of their own people unhindered.

And the Middle East, oh the Middle East. It's a tinder box ready to explode. In fact I am deeply, deeply concerned that the spark has already been lit. The Palestinian people are starving, and the Israelis have stopped almost all aid from entering Gaza. The Israeli hostages haven't all been freed by Hamas. Israel has been accused of genocide, although since Palestine isn't technically an independent state and isn't a member of the UN I'm not sure if it's protected under the Geneva Convention, and the US just vetoed its application for United Nations membership. Iran and Israel are taking potshots at each other. I'm not exactly sure what's going on in Yemen, but the Houthis (who are most likely sponsored by Iran) have been firing weapons at foreign ships while the people of Yemen are on the brink of famine, and the West are firing back as it's affecting our supply lines.

So in my darker moments I worry the whole area will go up in flames, and it will pull the rest of the world into the inferno. And what then? Will we conscript our youth to go off to fight an endless war in some twisted version of the Crusades, which were pretty twisted to start with. There is no version of war that can fix the whole mess.

What even would the aims of a war be? To make Iran and Iranian backed countries 'like' the West more?  Call me idealistic but I can't see how killing people is going to do that. To put a new regime in power in Iran? Iran has nuclear weapons, or at least is close to having them, and they didn't spend all that money and effort developing them in secret to go down without pressing the button. So it's a completely no win situation.

I don't have a happy ending for these reflections. I am genuinely crying out, 'Is there no balm in Gilead?' Christian that I am, unless this is the end of days (in which case this would be a very different blog entry), I can't see Jesus calming these flames in any direct sort of way. Still, all is not yet lost. Blessed are the peacemakers has been internalised into the majority of Western culture, although we do not heed it as we should. So I hope and I pray that our peacemakers - the United Nations, the highly trained diplomats of all of our countries, the leaders of all our nations, can somehow navigate the murky waters and find that Balm of Gilead and quench the flames that otherwise threaten to consume us. 

*Please note that I'm not an expert in what I'm talking about above and there might be errors, but I have tried to fact check as much as I can.