Heal me, Jehovah, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved for thou art my praise.
Commentary for this Verse
Jeremiah has just heard God call the human heart deceitful and beyond anyone's knowing. His own message is being mocked. So he asks God for the healing no one else can give, and rests the whole prayer on who God is.
Why the prophet turns to God alone
The chapter opens by contrasting the man who leans on human strength with the man who trusts the Lord.
William KellyThe danger for God's people was that they trusted in man and in human strength (verse 5). When the state of things becomes thoroughly evil and corrupt, the only object of trust is God. We must look to Him. The Lord blesses so richly that if we only trust Him, no day is too dark for God to give us His richest blessings and the light of His presence.
The wound that needs healing
Verse 9 has already said the heart is deceitful and desperately sick. One writer works from older translations, which call the heart "desperately wicked" and "incurable". He reads it through the law's test for leprosy, where a priest checked whether the disease went deeper than the skin.
G C WillisFriend, the disease is deeper than the skin (Leviticus 13:3). It is not only a surface trouble with you. No, the real trouble is far deeper. It is in our heart, and the Priest pronounces it "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Jeremiah 17:9. And He adds, "Who can know it? I the Lord search the heart." He knows well you do not know your own heart. Only the Lord knows how bad you really are. He knows well that you are not able to know that your leprosy is so terribly bad that it is "incurable."
He prays as one of the people
Jeremiah does not stand apart from the nation he warns. His plea for healing is bound up with theirs, and writers see in it a pattern that outlasts his own day.
J. N. DarbyThe prophet throws himself on the LORD in the name of the people. His enemies mocked God's testimonies, and because of their wickedness he appeals to God. He asks God, whose terrible judgments were to scatter the people, not to be a terror to him. God was all his hope in the day of evil. What a picture of the faithful remnant in the last days — and at all times, of the lot of anyone who stays faithful when the people of God will not listen to him!
The throne he prays from
Verse 12 names a glorious high throne as the sanctuary. Jeremiah prays from there.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe prophet's worship here also stands for the worship and heart-searching of the godly remnant of the Lord's people. The sanctuary of the godly is the glorious high throne, that throne which we know as the throne of grace. In verse 14 the prophet speaks for those who fear God, and puts into words their need of His salvation.
Asked with certainty, not hope
The prayer doubles each request, first the plea and then the certainty: heal me and I shall be healed. One writer hears in that the voice of a man with no one else to turn to, and so with nothing to doubt.
H J VineJeremiah realises that he has no one to turn to but the Lord, and with confidence and assurance he prays, "Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise."
God Himself as the praise
The reason Jeremiah gives is not a benefit but a Person. One writer follows that step from God's gifts to God Himself.
William KellyIt is not only a blessing in itself, or in its indirect but real effects; the Giver Himself is our joy, our boast, and our glory. The consequences are blessed to the soul; how much more is it to reach the source from which all flows! This, then, is the essential spring of worship... rejoicing in God is what makes praise and adoration the simple, natural exercise of the heart.
Summary
- Heart — the trouble Jeremiah brings to God is deeper than the skin. The heart is deceitful and desperately sick, and an older translation calls it incurable.
- Trust — human strength has already failed. When everything is corrupt, God is the only one left to trust, and no day is too dark for Him.
- Throne — Jeremiah prays from the sanctuary of verse 12, the glorious high throne, which writers call the throne of grace.
- Cry — Jeremiah prays in the name of the people, with no one else to turn to, and so asks with confidence: heal me and I shall be healed.
- Praise — the ground of the whole prayer is God Himself. Reaching past His blessings to the Giver is the spring of worship.