“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” Jeremiah asks it of a people who are hurting and have not been healed. Other verses are less tender. Asa, sick in his feet, “sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians”, and Job calls his friends “physicians of no value”. A woman in Mark 5 had suffered many things of many physicians and grew worse. Then Jesus, using the plain picture, says the whole do not need a doctor but the sick do, and that he came for exactly those people. Mark 2:15-17 is a good place to begin.
7 verses
And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.
But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.
Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,
And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
Asa, afflicted with some bodily malady, “sought not to the Lord but to the physicians” (2 Chr. 16:12). The “physicians” were those who “practised heathen arts of magic, disavowing recognized methods of cure, and dissociating the healing art from dependence on the God of Israel. The sin of Asa was not, therefore, in seeking medical advice, as we understand the phrase, but in forgetting Jehovah.”