Devotional Short Note to Psalm 116: This psalm composer is very happy and has reason for that since he (see 116:16b “son”) was very sick almost terminal, but the Lord healed the person and now the faithful blessed one cannot stop finding actions to do to God. Note all the actions: “I love…” (116:1a); “I will call…” (116:2b; also 13b and 17b); “I shall walk…” (116:9a); “I will lift up…” (116:13a); “I requested…” (116:16a); “I will offer…” (116:17a); “I will pay…” (116:18a). These are actions after the illness. But what were his actions before the illness?

“And I called…” (116:4a); “I ask…” (116:4b); “I trusted…” (116:10a); “I, I said…” (116:11a) [the selfish I speaking here with the repetition of the first person pronoun].

More about the problem. He/she was in a flat spin about the illness. Apparently human medical specialists were consulted, but the outcome was not promising. The medical profession of our day will say, “What do you expect with such technological incompetency!” Wait a minute. Their herbal medicine knowledge was great. They had the problem though, among the surrounding nations that they mixed the supernatural or magic with the medicine practice. Anyway, the psalmist was not satisfied: “I said in my haste: ‘Every human is a liar’” (116:11).

The cuneiformist R. C. Thompson said about the cuneiform texts that were discovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal in 650 BCE at Niniveh, talking about the 660 medical texts there: “I spent a large part of two years at work on the 250 vegetable drugs known to the Assyrian botanists.” He had to figure out what the different vegetable drugs were. We must keep in mind that at Tell Duweir in Israel, J. L. Starkey described skulls that they found there with surgical holing. Brain-surgery in Old Testament times? Divination and medical practices were sometimes mixed and a magician would come and try to guess what is wrong. Changing interpretations could upset the patient. A clay liver magician would come and throw his liver shaped texts and say something, then another magician would come and say the opposite. Not much to be trusted. There was your azipu or magical expert and physician or asu-u. A book by M. Powell was written about drugs and pharmaceuticals in the biblical and rabbinic world. D. Ortner studied diseases and mortality of people living in 2154 BCE near Sodom and Gemorrah published in Annual of ASOR 122 of 1981. The pulse rate was important to Mesopotamian medical experts as Oppenheim showed. A Caesarian section was done in the Second Millennium BCE. There is a medical dictionary that lists all the body-parts in Assyrian-Babylonian published by Holma. There were kidney diseases in Ancient Babylonia as Geller showed. Sumerian medical prescriptions existed as Civil indicated. Some scholars discussed medical commentaries from Nippur (Civil). Assyrian medical practitioners sometimes thought the “hand of the ghost” was on the patient so they gave prescriptions for that (R. C. Thompson). In the epilogue of the famous Law Code of Hammurabi, leprosy is mentioned (Chase). The texts indicated that some people suffered from rabies (Blaisdell). The ancients also overworked themselves and suffered from Mycotoxicoses (Biggs). I met Biggs at the Oriental Institute years ago. Very kind. He also discussed surgery in Mesopotamia. Abortion was done in the Ancient Near East (Biggs). He also mentioned conception and contraception. Biggs mentioned the case of magician or omen liver text reader who was a physician and the problem was, he could not read Sumerian and the liver texts had Sumerian on it. How was he to tell the patient the correct advice?  “Every human is a liar” (116:11).

“The cords of death compassed me, and the straits of the Sheol found me, trouble and sorrow I found” (116:3). The psalmist is crying “mine eyes from tears” (116:8b). He had a faithful mother “I am Your servant, the son of Your handmaid” (116:16b). Here lies maybe the key to the solution of this person’s problem. The role of the mother to the child is so important, especially the spiritual education.

This young man was almost going to die, of what we do not know clearly but it was due to his lifestyle since he said: “my feet from stumbling” (116:8b). Is it stumbling and then die? Is it that kind of stumbling? “I was brought low” (116:6b). Many people take advantage of others and ‘bring them low.’

Almost dying he remembered his mother and turned to the Lord for help. “I love that the Lord should hear my voice and supplications” (116:1). No magician, or medical practitioner in his area. He called the Lord. “and I called upon the name of the Lord: I ask O Lord, deliver my soul” (116:4a-b). He prayed to God. Ellen White said: “Pray in faith. And be sure to bring your lives into harmony with your petitions, that you may receive the blessings for which you pray.” (Ellen White, Pray, 216.4).

“He inclined His ear unto me” (116:2a). He was going to die but the Lord stepped in and saved him: “for You delivered my soul from death” (116:8a). “I was brought low, and me He saved” (116:6b). “

That is why this young man wants to do as much as he can for God. All the listed actions above is because of this saving action of healing for him.

There is one last issue that needs to be pointed out. After God saved him and healed him he said about himself: “return my soul to your rest [noah]” (116:7a). He wants to keep the Sabbath. There was an Assyrian-Babylonian bilingual dictionary found at Niniveh which read that the word “Sabbath” means “day of the rest [noah] of the heart” or as it appears on K4397 where ša-pat/bat-tu appears in column 2 line 16 and its meaning is explained adjacent in column 1 line 16 as umu nuh libbi = “day of the rest of the heart”. His biggest problem was, seemingly in my analysis, that he did not keep the Sabbath but now, he is going to do it as his mother taught him “Your handmaid”.