Illness and chronic pain

So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes.

Job's illness is described physically and without metaphor: sores from the sole of his foot to the top of his head, and a man sitting in the ashes scraping himself with a piece of broken pottery. The book never explains it to him.

So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome.

Months of emptiness, nights measured by how long until morning, tossing until dawn, skin broken and loathsome. It is one of the few passages in the Bible written from inside a body that hurts continuously.

My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.

A psalm of the sick that does not clean itself up. Wounds that stink, a body bowed down all day, no soundness left in the flesh, roaring from the disquiet of his heart. It reads as a record of what the days were like.

Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long? Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies’ sake.

A request to be healed, with a question attached that gets no answer in the psalm: how long. What is preserved here is the asking, not a report of how it turned out.

In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live. Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the LORD, saying, I beseech thee, O LORD, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of the LORD came to him, saying, Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.

Hezekiah is told flatly to set his house in order because he will not live, turns his face to the wall and weeps, and is granted fifteen more years. It is one king at one moment, told as a story about him, not as a rule about how illness goes.

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,

Twelve years of bleeding, many physicians, all her money spent, and no better but worse. Mark records the failure of every treatment she tried before he records anything else about her.

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Paul asked three times for the thorn in the flesh to be taken away and was told no. He never says what it was. What the passage reports is a refusal, and an answer about grace being sufficient given in place of the removal he asked for.

Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

Paul mentions in passing that an illness is why he stopped in Galatia at all, and that the people there did not treat his condition with contempt. The sickness is neither explained nor resolved, only named.