Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
Is there no balm - balsam; to be applied to the wounds of my people. Brought into Judea first from Arabia Felix, by the Queen of Sheba, in Solomon's time (Josephus, 'Antiquities,' 8: 2). The opobalsamum of Pliny; or else (Bochart) the resin drawn from the terebinth. It abounded in Gilead, east of Jordan, where, in consequence, many 'physicians' established themselves (Jeremiah 46:11; Jeremiah 51:8; Genesis 37:25; Genesis 43:11).
Why ... is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? - The Hebrew is literally, Why is not the lengthening out of, etc., gone up? hence, it comes to mean, Why is not the long bandage applied to bind up a wound? So the Arabic also (Gesenius). As the same Hebrew х 'ªrukat (H724)] is used (Isaiah 58:8) in the secondary sense health, so here we may translate, 'Why is not the health ... recovered?' literally, come up again, as skin coming up over a wound in healing.
Remarks:
(1) The righteous retribution of God is shown in his having made the very objects of Judah's idolatry (the sun, moon, and starry host) the silent witnesses of Judah's punishment and degradation (Jeremiah 8:2). So we may be assured that in all cases the object of men's sins will be made at last instrumental in men's shame and punishment. The Roman nation, to whose power the Jews gave up the king of the Jews to be crucified, has for ages since been the chief scourge of the Jewish people. Let sinners be warned that God is not to be mocked, and that as men sow, so shall they reap.
(2) How amazing is the long-suffering with which God waits for sinners if they will still turn to Him! He expostulates with them on the unreasonableness of their conduct. In ordinary life, if one falls, he tries to arise again; if he turns away from the right road, he tries to return back to it. But in their spiritual concerns most sinners, like apostate Jerusalem, are so perverse that they love their own aberrations, and cling to their self-deceits, and "refuse to return" (Jeremiah 8:4-5). God as it were listens for the first word of penitence to fall from the backslider; but the sinner madly rushes headlong forward in his own course, as the horse to the battle (Jeremiah 8:6). If men would stop in their course, commune with their own heart, and instead of asking in self-complacent pride, What have I done? ask of God, Lord, what wouldest thou have me to do? they would be led by Him into the paths of righteousness, and would find them to be paths of blessedness.
(3) Many pride themselves on religious privileges and knowledge, as the Jews boasted themselves in the law; but unless taught by the Holy Spirit, they have their Bibles, ministers, and other means of grace, in vain (Jeremiah 8:8-9). Others trust in their own reason as a sufficient guide, independently of the written Word of Cod; but the sentence of revelation holds good concerning them - "Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?" The very instinct of the birds is superior to their boasted reason; for though reason, when subjected to the revealed will of God, is a distinguishing point of preeminence in man above the brutes, yet when abused as if it could make man independent of revelation, it actually degrades him beneath them: for they by instinct obey God's will concerning them, whereas man, following his own fancied wisdom in the pride of reason, and in disregard of revelation, "knows not the judgment of the Lord," and so utterly fails to fulfill the end of his creation (Jeremiah 8:7).
(4) Not until judgments actually overtake them will men for the most part humble themselves under the hand of God. But then it will be too late. When God is against us, who or what can avail for us? (Jeremiah 8:12-17). Then, indeed, shall the lost realize in all its bitterness the exclamation in Jeremiah 8:20, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Let us be wise in time, and heed God's voice of love now, and so we shall not fear God's voice hereafter summoning us to judgment.
(5) True ministers and Christians, while denouncing to the impenitent God's coming judgments, will do so, not as if the doom of others gave them pleasure, but with heartfelt sorrow and tears, as Jeremiah wept for his doomed country (Jeremiah 8:18; Jeremiah 8:21); and as Paul spoke of the enemies of Christ "weeping" (Philippians 3:18).
(6) It is not that there is no spiritual balm-no physician for the soul-if men perish eternally. It is that they will not come, that they may have life. There is a balm of sovereign efficacy for healing the most desperate spiritual wound; it is the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, which cleanseth from all sin (1 John 1:7). He is the Good Physician, and is as able as He is willing "to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession" (Hebrews 7:25).