Featured Causes of human sickness

The septuagint includes the human will in human sickness:

Proverbs 18:9, Amplified Bible
He who is loose and slack in his work is brother to him who is a destroyer and he who does not use his endeavors to heal himself is brother to him who commits suicide.​

The human will plays a role in the immune system. It's a phenomenon in the medical world.

Forgot to mention this one in the list.

 

I disagree!

Proverbs 18:22, Amplified Bible
He who finds a [true] wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.​

 

Oppression

There is another. The septuagint reads (Poole, 1996):

Ecclesiastes 7:7
For extortion drives [the wise man mad], and destroys the [magnanimity of his heart].​

(In case you were wondering what magnanimity meant):

loftiness of spirit enabling one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness and pettiness, and to display a noble generosity

magnanimity. 2013. In Merriam-Webster.com.
Retrieved August 19, 2013, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/magnanimity​

This same word, translated into our english, "extortion", is used in the septuagint Job in the following phrase (Pool, 1996):

Job 35:9, bold emphasis mine
[The ones being extorted by a multitude] shall cry out; they shall yell because of the arm of many.​

I read a section in a psychology book about how “the problems specific to oppressed and exploited groups tend to reflect a perfectly understandable and normal reaction to abnormal circumstances” (Collin, Benson, Ginsburg, Grand, Lazyan, & Weeks, 2012, p. 257).

Thankfully, we do read of a better end for such exploited individuals.

For one, in the millennium we read that this will take place. Christ will "deliver the sons of the needy, and shall humble the extortioner" (Pool, 1996, Psalm 72:4).

I am trying to find a verse that would explicitly say that God gives a better end for exploited individuals in this age. Maybe someone can beat me to it. Ecclesiastes 5:8 is perhaps borderline.

Anyways, as for health for such a sickness, it would seem, from Ecclesiastes 4, that comfort doth heal these extorted individuals (Pool, 1996, Eccles. 4:1):

And I turned and I beheld all the extortions, the ones happening under the sun. And behold, the tear of the ones being extorted, and there is not one comforting them. And by the hand of ones extorting them was by strength, and there is not one comforting them. ​

Which has the medical world in agreement (Ornish, 2004).

References

Collin, C., Benson, N., Ginsburg, J., Grand, V., Lazyan, M. & Weeks, M. (2012). The Psychology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. New York, USA: Dorling Kindersley.

Ornish, D. (2004). Dean Ornish: Healing through diet [Video file]. Retrieved from TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_ornish_on_healing.html

Pool, C. V. D. (1996). Apostolic Bible Polyglot. Charles Van der Pool.
www.apostolicbible.com​

 

I guess there might be exception to this though webdog. Depending on what kind of woman it is that one's wife is (cp. Prov. 12:4). Even then I wonder if a not-so-noble-wife-as-she-could-be extends life for her husband, as contrasted to a person who does not marry at all.

 

Romans 4:19 tells us that Abraham's body was dead, though it was 100 years old.

Maybe age would fall somewhere in the list too.

"I go the way of all the earth..." (1 Kings 2:2, KJV).​

 

In another thread I said that Proverbs 27:5-6 had been on my mind. This post shows the thought I have given on the subject of whether or not correcting should be done to the afflicted and broken spirited.

I have thought, that comforting the broken spirited, more than or instead of correcting them, is the correct option.

"To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend" (Job 6:14a, KJV).

It is a wise and true proverb, "A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?" (Pr. 18:14, ESV). Job 12:5 tells us that "He who is at ease holds calamity in contempt" (NASB).

Job complains, when "his grief was very great" (Job 2:13, KJV), that his friend(s) were miserable comforters:

Job 16, ESV, bold emphases mine
2 “I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
3 Shall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
4 I also could speak as you do,
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and shake my head at you.
5 I could strengthen you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.​

His friends had been saying, that he was talking too much:

"Therefore Job opens his mouth in vain;
He multiplies words without knowledge." (Job 35:16, NKJV).

"Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified?" (Job 11:2, KJV).

"How long wilt thou speak these things? and how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind?" (Job 8:2, KJV).

"“Should a wise man answer with empty knowledge,
And fill himself with the east wind?" (Job 15:2, NKJV).​

One accused him of doing evil, because God, being just, must render to men their due reward:

Job 34, NKJV
7 What man is like Job,
Who drinks scorn like water,
8 Who goes in company with the workers of iniquity,
And walks with wicked men?
9 For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing
That he should delight in God.’

10 “Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding:
Far be it from God to do wickedness,
And from the Almighty to commit iniquity.
11 For He repays man according to his work,
And makes man to find a reward according to his way.​

We know that Job's words were right, and his friend's wrong, God giving witness (Job 42:7):

NKJV
the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.​

Job said, "Do you intend to rebuke my words, And the speeches of a desperate one, which are as wind?" (6:26, NKJV). The answer is an implied "no". So I do think that comfort, more than, or instead of rebuking/correcting the afflicted, is what should be done.

 

I like the last one, injury. I didn't think that the Bible would've said that injury causes sickness.

"And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick" (2 Kings 1:2, KJV).

 

(The medical world would agree with this).

 

I guess Proverbs 17:25 would say that foolish children don't promote health too, webdog.

"A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him" (KJV).

 

I found something by Plato, which I thought matched nicely with Ecclesiastes 7:7 above,

I do realize that "mad" can be translated as either anger or insane, and I am in a dilemma between which one I suppose it means. If it means insane, then the sickness of Ecclesiastes 7:7, I think, can be given to both the person viewing the oppression and the victim of oppression. Since the wise man hates oppression, and sympathizes with the victim, he would experience the pain that the victim is going through, and according to Plato, since he is in "great pain" with the victim, he "is not able to see or to hear anything rightly ; but is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason".

The septuagint Proverbs 22:16 also tells us that the oppressor "produces for himself many evils" (Pool, 1996). Maybe this would involve sickness (cp. Pharaoh and his oppression in the Pentateuch).

Pool, C. V. D. (1996). Apostolic Bible Polyglot. Charles Van der Pool.
www.apostolicbible.com​

 

Poor physical exercise

"bodily training is of some value" (1 Tim. 4:8, ESV).

Plato said, "the due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye", and that "we should not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body, and thus they will be on their guard against each other, and be healthy and well balanced":

 

Hm. Nice to hear from you again Biblicist

A thought of mine about Genesis 2:17 is, maybe Adam and Eve could've still gotten sick without dying before the sin came.

(Are "deadly thing", Mark 16:18, KJV, the result of sin?)

If the millennium is the era in which there will be the tree of healing (Rev. 22:1-2) and no sin, what need of healing would there be if there was no sickness?

(Maybe the answer would be, that the tree of healing will be for sicknesses that aren't the result of sin, accidents being one cause, 2 Sam. 4:4, deadly things, Mark 16:18, being another).

Also, in the case of Job's friend, he was wrong to claim that Job's disaster (which included sickness) was the result of sin:

 

Also, are poor clothing and nutrition the result of sin?

Or having an injury (2 Kings 1:2)?

Maybe Rheumatoid arthritis or Alzheimer's disease (the causes of which are not fully known) are not the result of sin, and should fall under the category of Ecclesiastes 8:14: "there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked" (ESV). Maybe someone having an injury or the poor who are poorly fed and clothed (all valid causes of sickness) would fall under this category of Ecclesiastes 8:14 too.

*I don't think that it's up to anyone to try and decypher the meaning behind someone's sickness though (2 Chronicles 6:29: "each knowing his own affliction and his own sorrow [maybe, as has been shown, there was no sin to cause the sickness, maybe there was]", ESV), but instead, do what David and/or Christ did: "But I, when they were sick- ​​​​​​​I wore sackcloth; ​​​​​​​I afflicted myself with fasting; ​​​​​​​I prayed with head bowed on my chest" (Ps. 35:13, ESV).

**In the other thread, that is now closed, I posted about David's prayer to turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness (to the subjective audience of Ahithophel). I commented on Christ's prayer and fasting too, to cause the demon to depart. I just wanted to clear up any possible misunderstandings. What I meant about David's prayer was, that his prayer was for God to coerce the thoughts of men. If demons are responsible for thoughts of men, and Christ also prayed for the demon to depart, then there would be similarity there.