Today’s Scripture Reading (September
16, 2015): Numbers 5
Ancient Egypt
may have been one of the earliest civilizations to develop the idea of
Medicine. And that was for good reason, their environment tended to make people
sick. The Egyptians built their Empire close to the life giving waters of the
Nile. You could not have life without first having access to water, and in
ancient Egypt, other than the occasional oasis found in the desert, water meant
the Nile River. But the Nile bought other things not so good with it, such as
malaria and other diseases caused largely by parasites that inhabited its life
giving water. Crocodiles were a constant threat to life in the region, and
injuries from crocodile attacks were common. As well, the diet, especially of
the wealthy, was rich in carbohydrates which left the ancient Egyptians with serious
problems with their teeth – and apparently with their weight. We shouldn’t be
fooled by the thin pictures of ancient Egyptians on tomb walls. Their mummies
tell a different story – many Egyptians were obese.
The most
ancient response to disease was isolation. Early on the people began to realize
that sicknesses could spread from person to person. So as Israel emerges out of
Egypt, they begin to form a very fundamental response to sickness – cast the
person out. Even contact with the dead could bring disease on the living, so
those that had to deal with a dead body needed also to be cast out, just as a precaution
to make sure that they were not sick. The Mosaic Law uses the term unclean to
describe these persons, a term that is loaded with ceremony, but also came with
a very practical purpose – to keep the community at large healthy.
This idea of
casting the sick out in Israel and Egypt and other societies might have been
the beginning of what we know of as hospitals. It is a small step from casting
someone out to beginning to develop a way of compassionately caring for those
who have been isolated or cast out from the community. It is a practice that Christians
have taken to heart. In almost every plague that has taken place in the past
2000 years, you will find healthy Christians that have taken their positions
among the sick to ease the suffering and work toward a cure. Many of these
health practitioners ended up suffering from the same disease that they were
treating. But that cost was never considered too high to stop the practice of
caring for the sick. The sick may have to be isolated from the community at
large in order to protect the health of the community, but compassion still
needed to be extended to them.
The idea of
sickness in Israel was also a reminder to everyone of the penalty of death that
was a result of the fall. Sickness was not sin, although sometimes we forget
that even today, but it was a reminder of the sinful state of our world – and a
reality for all who lived within it.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Numbers
6
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