My comfort in my sadness! my heart is faint in me!
Here the prophet stops speaking to the people and speaks about himself. He reaches for comfort and finds his own heart failing. The verse raises a question many readers meet sooner or later. What do you do when the grief you carry for other people has no cure in you?
This verse marks the turn from warning to weeping. One commentator marks where the grief begins and where it ends:
Israel understood less than the birds of the sky. The birds at least knew their appointed times, but Israel did not know the judgment of Jehovah (Jer. 8). From verse 18 to verse 2 of chapter 9 the prophet lays open the depth of his grief.
The sorrow is not vague sadness. It comes from watching people who are in danger and cannot feel it:
The people did not know the time: they did not know His judgment; they were going on in self-security. They thought that things might not be quite as right as they looked. But they were not as bad as this troublesome man Jeremiah said. And so they were crying "Peace, peace," where there was no peace. They were not even ashamed when they had committed abominations. The prophet could only give himself up to sorrow over them.
The weakness was not an accident. God chose it, and He had a purpose in it:
Nothing is more striking than the deep affliction of the prophet. He is distressed; his heart is broken. We also see that God chose a heart that was weak by nature, easily cast down and discouraged, even while He filled it with His own strength. He did this for a reason. The anguish, the complaints, the distress of soul, the anger of a weak heart that resents oppression but cannot throw it off or overcome it — all of it was poured out before Him. Poured out like that, it would stand as a witness against the people whose deep-rooted wickedness called for His vengeance.
The same writer sets Jeremiah's grief beside a deeper one:
The affliction of Christ was infinitely deeper, and it was His Spirit that produced Jeremiah's. But Christ's perfect communion with His Father kept all that anguish in secret between Jesus and His Father. In Jeremiah it broke out into complaints.
The sorrow is not for himself. Love for a people is what makes him feel it:
Like our Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet loved Israel and Jerusalem. He truly felt their sorrowful state, and he entered into it deeply. And just as if their desolation were his own, he cries, "When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me" (Jer. 8:18).
(That is an older rendering of the verse. The ESV puts the last line as "my heart is sick within me.")
Jeremiah does not stay inside his own grief. He starts searching for a healer — and the search comes up empty:
Feeling all this, the prophet cries, "Astonishment has taken hold of me! Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there?" (Jer. 8:21-22). No balm and no physician could be found. There was no man. The coming of Christ is the only hope.
Israel had a physician all along:
Jehovah Himself was the physician of His people Israel, ready at all times to heal and restore them.
Grief like this raises a question of conscience. One commentator answers it, and shows where comfort came from:
His heart was filled with the sense that, since the trouble came from Jehovah, the very thing that gave the sorrow so much depth was also a comfort to the heart. … It is not sinful to feel trouble and distress at the thought of God's judgment falling on those whom He loves. In Jeremiah's case, though, his heart sometimes failed him.
The remedy is not to feel less:
It is good to feel an affliction like this. The only harm is when we let it weaken confidence in the Lord.
- Cause. His faintness came from outside him. The people cried "Peace, peace" where there was no peace. They felt no shame, and went on in self-security.
- Chosen. God chose a heart that was weak by nature and easily cast down, then filled it with His own strength. The breaking is part of the testimony.
- Shared. Jeremiah felt their desolation as if it were his own. The same Spirit worked in Christ, whose affliction was deeper still and stayed in secret with His Father.
- Searched. He reached for comfort and found no balm and no physician. Israel's own physician was Jehovah, and the coming of Christ is the only hope.
- Safe. Sorrow over God's judgment falling on those He loves is not sinful. The only harm is letting it weaken confidence in the Lord.
Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people, from a very far country Is not Jehovah in Zion? Is not her king in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, with foreign vanities?
A cry goes up across the whole land, and it is a question: has God abandoned His own city? God answers with a question of His own. It points straight at the carved images the people had brought in.
At this point in the book, Jeremiah's own grief takes over. One summary marks where that grief begins and how far it runs:
Judah would be cast off, as Ephraim had been, and God would hear no prayer made for His people. He asked for obedience, not sacrifice. If the people came into His house while they were practising idolatry, they only defiled it. But Israel understood less than the birds of the sky. The birds at least knew the seasons set for them, but Israel did not know the judgment of the LORD (Jer. 8). From verse 18 to verse 2 of chapter 9 the prophet opens up the depth of his grief.
The question the people ask is not wrong in itself. God had put His name in Zion, and He had promised to be faithful. The danger lay in how they used that promise:
That is just what they did in Jeremiah's time, when judgment was coming, and what the Christian world is doing now. They said, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these," and "The law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise" — and all the while they were on their way to Babylon. God's faithfulness never changed. But the moment they used it to keep themselves in a place of evil, it became the very ground of their ruin. The same principles that would be our safety become our ruin, if we leave out any sense of where we are.
Israel had made the same mistake once before, with the ark instead of the temple:
It is very sad when God's people trust the symbols of God's presence instead of God Himself. That is what happened here. It happened again later, just before the king of Babylon carried Judah away. Here the people thought they were completely safe because the ark was in the camp. Later they thought no enemy could overthrow them because they had the temple in Jerusalem.
The second half of the verse is God's reply. One writer recalls Shiloh, Israel's earlier place of worship, and shows how empty it was to expect God to stay:
Yet God stoops to reason with His people, despite how coarse they are. He points to Shiloh, where the tent of meeting first stood. What an empty and foolish idea — that God would keep His throne in a place where His people insulted Him to His face!
God names the cause: carved images and foreign idols. Earlier in the same book He compares His people with the nations around them:
"Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods at all? But my people have exchanged their glory for what does not profit." … This is the argument He makes. Did the nations — the pagan peoples — ever do what My people have done? My people have exchanged their glory for what does not profit. All through Scripture you will find that what profits is the great point. If there has been a turning away from God, has it profited you?
The cry also asks about Zion's King. One writer looks past Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, to the King who will rule from Jerusalem:
Supreme rule passes from Babylon: you will find the true King in Zion, in Jerusalem. Only from there can anyone rule the earth rightly. The King comes from David's royal line, as Matthew 1 shows, not from Nebuchadnezzar's. He must also be divine — the Son of God.
Carved images sound remote. The principle behind them is not:
What a man loves more than God is his idol; and if God has not the first place in a man's life He has no place.
- The cry. Judah asks whether God has left Zion, while Jeremiah pours out his grief over them from verse 18 onward.
- The confidence. God's faithfulness never changes. But lean on it while you stay in evil, and it becomes the ground of your ruin. They trusted the ark once and the temple later, in place of God Himself.
- The cause. The carved images are God's stated reason. He will not keep His throne where His people insult Him to His face.
- The bargain. They traded their glory for what does not profit. Has turning away from God ever paid?
- The King. Zion's true King is of David's line and divine. He will yet rule the earth from Jerusalem.
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
These words are not Jeremiah's own complaint. They are the cry of his people — a nation that has watched its time run out. The picture comes from farming. The grain is in, the warm months are over, and nothing has come to save them. What happens when a season of God's mercy runs out?
The chapter around this cry shows a nation sure that things were not so bad. One commentator describes that false calm, and the sorrow it left the prophet in.
The people did not know the time; they did not know His judgment; they were going on in self-security. They thought that perhaps things were not quite as right as they appeared to be, but were not so bad as this troublesome man, Jeremiah, said. And so they were crying "Peace, peace," where there was no peace. They were not even ashamed when they had committed abominations. The prophet could only give himself up to sorrow over them.
The people speak the words, but the grief is Jeremiah's own. He looks for a cure for his nation and finds none.
The prophet, feeling all this, cries, "Astonishment has taken hold of me! Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" (Jer. 8:21-22). None could be found. There was no man. The coming of Christ is the only hope.
Another writer reads the same passage as feeling rather than argument — Jeremiah is simply overwhelmed.
His heart was faint in him. He is overwhelmed with sorrow. The harvest was past, the summer gone and they were not saved. It is a mournful outburst.
Commentators do not treat the words as finished history. One writer hears them on the lips of a faithful group in Israel in a day still to come.
"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." (Jer. 8:20) Such will be the sorrowful lament of the remnant when the Spirit of God has begun to touch their heart and conscience. "When they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child."
Harvest and summer belong to a calendar. One writer follows that calendar through Israel's history until only winter is left.
"And it was winter" (John 10:22). Yes, "winter!" All was now over with Israel. They had ignored their springtime of mercy. They had refused the light of their summer. They had closed their eyes to the long, lingering shadows of their autumn. Now their "winter" had come. Their harvest was past and their summer ended.
The same writer then applies the seasons to us. One winter, he warns, never thaws.
It is a solemn thing to allow each season of grace to slip away, for how quickly they pass! How soon life's spring and summer and autumn fade without our noticing, and "winter" comes. There is no winter so desolate as that of the persistent refusal of grace. No spring can follow that winter, no sun can thaw the chains of that eternal ice.
Writers return to this verse to warn against expecting a second chance once this one closes.
We know that the devil has his servants who preach "the gospel of the second chance." But be warned, this is the devil's gospel, not the Gospel of God. God says, "Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." (2 Cor. 6:2). How terrible for many who will cry — "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." (Jer. 8:20).
Others fasten on the last two words of the verse as the heaviest part of it.
But what about those who live and die without Christ? They are the ones who will have to say at last, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Who can measure the depths of misery — the eternity of woe — in these two words, "not saved!" "not saved!" What a text for a preacher! What a warning word for a sinner!
- Season. The verse runs on a farming calendar. God gave a set time, it ran its course, and it closed. Every point below follows that clock.
- Sleep. The people missed the season because they felt safe. They cried "Peace, peace" where there was no peace, and felt no shame for what they had done.
- Sorrow. Jeremiah does not gloat over the missed season. He is astonished, and looks for a cure for his people that no one can give.
- Second cry. A faithful group in Israel will one day make this same cry. God's Spirit will touch their conscience, and they will mourn over the One they pierced.
- Sunset. Writers apply that closing season to today. There is no second chance once it ends, and the whole verse rests on its last two words: not saved.
-- For the breach of the daughter of my people am I crushed; I go mourning; astonishment hath taken hold of me.
Jeremiah stands over a nation that is bleeding and does not know it, and their wound goes straight into him. What does a faithful person do when God judges His people and no one else feels it?
The people carrying the wound could not see it. They felt safe, they treated the prophet as a nuisance, and their false calm left him nothing to do but grieve.
The people did not know the time: they did not know His judgment; they were going on in self-security. They thought that things were perhaps not quite as good as they seemed, but not as bad as this troublesome man, Jeremiah, said. And so they were crying "Peace, peace," where there was no peace. They were not even ashamed when they had done detestable things. The prophet could only give himself up to sorrow over them.
Notice that Jeremiah does not say "their wound" but my people, and the hurt lands on his own heart. His love for the nation made their condition personal.
Like our Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet loved Israel and Jerusalem. He truly felt their sorrowful state. Jeremiah entered into it so deeply that we hear him cry out, "My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh the walls of my heart!" (Jer. 4:19). And as if their ruin were his own, he cries, "My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me" (Jer. 8:18).
Should tears stop when God Himself sends the blow? A writer on Lamentations answers no: a deserved punishment does not make the loss less worth weeping over.
God might raise up a fresh testimony, as we know He has done. But even while bowing to His sovereign will, every devout, God-fearing Israelite rightly carried unceasing sorrow over the utter ruin of the old witness. That sorrow was no less "because the LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions." Grief is not less over God's people because they have dishonoured God and are righteously chastised.
The dismay that took hold of Jeremiah did not stop at feeling. It sent him looking for a cure. Jeremiah's next words reach for Gilead, a region whose balm "was proverbial for its healing virtues" (Morrish Bible Dictionary). The search comes up empty.
The prophet, feeling all this, cries, "Dismay has taken hold on me! Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" (Jer. 8:21-22). None could be found. There was no man. The coming of Christ is the only hope.
The unanswered question was not about Gilead running out of ointment. Nothing man had could touch this sickness. Healing had to wait for Someone who could give life, not just apply remedies.
Before Christ came, there was no healing for man. Abraham longed for the day of Christ. There were prophets who spoke of Christ as a healer, blessing was promised, but there was no physician. "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" There was none. No physician could heal man's condition until Christ came, and they put Him to death. In Him there was living power... Healing did not depend on the condition of the sick, but on the power of the healer. Physicians could apply remedy after remedy with no result, until One came who could give life. Then everything changed.
Jeremiah's tears point past himself. Centuries later Another wept over the same city, and He could do what Jeremiah could not.
Christ wept over Jerusalem as He looked at it, and spoke of its great suffering. Only Christ could enter fully into all that their sin had brought upon them. Jeremiah could not do that. The blessed Saviour could do so; and in grace, and infinite love, He did so perfectly. Yes, He Himself bore the judgment which their sins deserved, as well as ours, that we might be saved.
That is where the balm came from — at a cost:
Only the rod upon Another could bring healing to us. Without the cross and its stripes there could be no balm of Gilead for wounded men.
- Wound. The people cried "Peace, peace" and felt no shame. Only the prophet saw the injury, and it wounded him.
- Weeping. He loved them, so their ruin became his own. A deserved chastening never makes grief over God's people less fitting.
- Wanting. The wound drove him to look for balm and a physician. He found neither.
- Waiting. No cure existed until Christ came, because healing rests on the power of the Healer, not the state of the patient.
- Won. The rod fell on Another. The cross supplies the balm that Gilead never had, so bring your wound to the Physician who came.
Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? Why then is there no dressing applied for the healing of the daughter of my people?
Jeremiah has watched his people ignore every warning. His grief breaks out here as a question, not a sermon. He is not asking about a shortage of medicine. He is asking why a people with the cure in reach stay sick.
Balm was a real medicine, and the region of Gilead was known for it. It also became a proverb.
The gum of the balsam bush, a medicine of great power. Gilead was famous for producing it. It is used as a proverb for the healing God had for His people if they really turned to Him. Jeremiah 8:22; Jeremiah 46:11; Jeremiah 51:8. Merchants carried it into Egypt and elsewhere. Genesis 37:25; Ezekiel 27:17. Jacob sent a little to Joseph. Genesis 43:11.
The second half of the question has an answer. Israel's healer was the Lord Himself, and that shapes how a believer meets illness today.
A Christian should certainly throw himself on the Lord when he is ill. He should ask why God sends or allows the illness. He may of course use ordinary remedies, but he must not trust in them apart from God's blessing on them. Jehovah Himself was the physician of His people Israel, ready at all times to heal and restore them. Jeremiah 8:22. Job, in the bitterness of his soul, found his friends to be physicians of no value. They did not understand his case, and only added to his misery. Job 13:4.
If the remedy was there and the healer willing, the problem lay with the patients. They felt safe, and they felt no shame.
The people did not know the time: they did not know His judgment; they were going on in self-security. They admitted things might not be quite as right as they looked. But they did not think things were as bad as this troublesome man Jeremiah said. And so they were crying "Peace, peace," when there was no peace. They were not even ashamed when they had committed abominations. The prophet could only give himself up to sorrow over them. "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?"
Jeremiah asked, and the answer he received was silence. Writers point past his own day for the answer.
The prophet feeling all this cries, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" None could be found. There was no man. The coming of Christ is the only hope.
The cure waited on a person, not a prescription. Cures depend on who is applying them.
Before Christ came, there was no healing for man. Abraham longed for the day of Christ. There were prophets who spoke of Christ as a healer, blessing was promised, but there was no physician. "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" There was none; for no physician could be found to heal man's condition until Christ came, and Him they put to death. In Him there was living power. When the crowd pressed around Him, a woman only touched the edge of His garment, and power went out of Him to heal her. Healing did not depend on the condition of the people who were healed, but on the power of the healer. Physicians might apply remedy after remedy, but nothing worked until One came who could give life. Then everything changed.
The balm came at a price, and Another paid it.
Alas, alas! only the rod upon Another could bring healing to us. Without the cross and its stripes there could be no balm of Gilead for wounded men.
The question can also be asked about yourself. Perhaps you cannot find in your own heart the love for Christ you long for. Then the verse becomes an invitation.
If you do not find that answer to His love which you long to find in yourself, go to the Father and tell Him you do not, and see what He will do. Calling sons was what He had in mind. Go to the great Physician, and you will find plenty of balm in Gilead.
- Wound — God's people were sick, and the sickness was moral. They felt safe, cried "Peace, peace," and were not ashamed of their sin.
- Balm — The gum of Gilead was a real and famous medicine. It pictures the healing God kept ready for His people if they really turned to Him.
- Physician — Jehovah Himself was Israel's healer, always ready to restore them. The tragedy is a sick nation standing next to a willing doctor.
- Silence — Jeremiah's question found no answer in his day. Commentators read that silence as pointing forward. No physician could heal man's condition until Christ came.
- Cross — The remedy is here now because the blows fell on Another. Without the cross there is no balm for wounded people. With it, you can go to the great Physician and find plenty of balm in Gilead.