17 Bible verses for healing
Passages to pray from a sickbed, a waiting room or a grieving heart, with honest words for the days when healing is slow.
The MySavior teamUpdated · 10 min read
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3 · BSB
Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for You are my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14 · BSB
The Bible verses most often prayed for healing are short and direct: “Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed” (Jeremiah 17:14), “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3), and “by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Scripture speaks to the healing of the body and of the heart, and it is just as honest about the long wait in between.
Nobody looks up healing verses on a good day. It is a pre-op room with a paper gown, a child’s fever at 2 a.m., a scan whose results come back on Thursday, or a grief that has settled into the shoulders and will not leave.
The seventeen passages below, all from the Berean Standard Bible, move from asking, to the body, to the heart, to waiting. Some were prayed by people who got better. Some were prayed by people who did not, or not yet. We kept both, because the Bible does.
Please keep the treatment and care your doctors recommend. Prayer and medicine are not rivals, and asking for both is not a lack of faith.
When you need to ask plainly
Jeremiah 17:14
Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for You are my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14 · BSB
Jeremiah prays this while people mock him: “Where is the word of the LORD?” He does not dress the request up. Heal me, save me. If you have no other words today, these are enough, and notice that they end in praise before anything has changed.
When your body hurts
Psalm 6:2
Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am frail; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are in agony.
Psalm 6:2 · BSB
David is not being brave here. He is frail, his bones ache, and a line later he cries, “How long, O LORD, how long?” It is a relief to find that kind of honesty in the Bible. You are allowed to tell God exactly where it hurts.
When you wonder if He wants to
Mark 1:41
Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” He said. “Be clean!”
Mark 1:41 · BSB
Under the law, a man with leprosy “must live alone in a place outside the camp.” Nobody touched him. Jesus could have healed him with a word, as he did for others; he reached out his hand first. The leper’s question, “If You are willing,” may be yours too. The answer begins with a touch.
When you need His name
From Exodus 15:26
I am the LORD who heals you.
From Exodus 15:26 · BSB
God says this after three days in the desert without water, just after the bitter water at Marah was made sweet. The next verse brings Israel to Elim, “where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees.” Healing here is a name God gives himself, not only something he does.
When you want to remember
From Psalm 103:2–3
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all His kind deeds— He who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases
From Psalm 103:2–3 · BSB
This psalm is a list of reasons to be grateful, and healing is near the top. Read it honestly, though: a few lines later David says “his days are like grass.” It is not a promise that every illness ends this side of heaven. It asks you to remember the times God did heal, and to say them out loud.
When you have tried everything
Luke 8:48
“Daughter,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
Luke 8:48 · BSB
She had been bleeding for twelve years. Luke, traditionally the Gospel’s author and the man Paul calls “the beloved physician,” says it plainly: “She had spent all her money on physicians, but no one was able to heal her.” She reached for the edge of a cloak in a crowd. Jesus stopped everything to find her, and called her “Daughter.”
When you need others to pray
James 5:14–15
Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
James 5:14–15 · BSB
James does not tell sick people to pray harder on their own. He tells them to call for help, and he tells the church to come, with oil and with prayer. Catholics and Orthodox Christians receive this as a sacrament; many other churches simply gather around a bed and pray. If you are the healthy one, this verse is for you too: go.
For the hospital bed
Psalm 41:3
The LORD will sustain him on his bed of illness and restore him from his bed of sickness.
Psalm 41:3 · BSB
For the hospital bed, the couch you have not left in days, or the chair beside someone else’s bed. The promise in this psalm is first made to the one “who cares for the poor,” which makes it a good verse to pray for nurses and caregivers as well. To sustain is to hold someone up while they are lying down.
When you cannot find the words
Romans 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.
Romans 8:26 · BSB
A long illness wears out language. You run out of new ways to ask. Paul says this is exactly where the Spirit helps, praying with “groans too deep for words.” A sigh in the night counts. A few verses earlier he admits that we groan too, waiting for “the redemption of our bodies.”
When the wound is in the heart
Psalm 147:3
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3 (BSB)
Read the next verse as well: “He determines the number of the stars; He calls them each by name.” The God who keeps count of the stars bends close enough to bandage a wound. The psalm celebrates God gathering exiles home to a city that needed rebuilding. It is short enough to see first thing in the morning, before the day has a chance to argue.
Sunday, November 8
9:41
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3 · BSBTurn this verse into your Lock Screen wallpaperWrite it over a photograph in MySavior’s wallpaper maker and save it to Photos at the size of your iPhone’s screen.
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When you need to know He was wounded too
Isaiah 53:5
But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5 · BSB
The New Testament reads this chapter in two ways, and both matter. Matthew sees it fulfilled when Jesus healed the sick: “He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.” Peter applies it to sin and forgiveness. Either way, the one who heals is not distant. He knows wounds from the inside.
When healing is slow
From Psalm 13:1
How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?
From Psalm 13:1 · BSB
Four times in two verses David asks God how long. Then, with no change in his circumstances that we can see, he ends: “I will sing to the LORD, for He has been good to me.” If you are stuck in the middle of this psalm, it is fine to stay there for a while. God did not edit the complaint out.
When the answer is not the one you asked for
From 2 Corinthians 12:9
My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.
From 2 Corinthians 12:9 · BSB
Paul saw others healed through his hands, yet he writes, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.” The thorn stayed. Nobody knows what it was. In 2 Timothy he even mentions leaving a co-worker sick in Miletus. If your healing has not come, you are not outside the faith. You are standing next to Paul.
When your body is wearing out
2 Corinthians 4:16
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4:16 · BSB
Paul does not pretend the body is fine. He calls it “wasting away” in plain words. What he notices is something else growing at the same time, quietly, day by day. Some of the most whole people you will ever meet live in failing bodies.
When you are tired of waiting
Psalm 27:13–14
Still I am certain to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait patiently for the LORD!
Psalm 27:13–14 · BSB
The phrase “in the land of the living” means here, in this life, not only in heaven. David expects to see God’s goodness before the end, then tells himself twice to wait. Waiting is not passive. Some days it is the bravest thing you do: keep the appointment, take the pills, say the prayer again.
For the morning after a long night
From Malachi 4:2
But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and leap like calves from the stall.
From Malachi 4:2 · BSB
These words come near the very end of the Christian Old Testament. Christians have long heard Christ in them, and Charles Wesley wrote the image into “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Look at the calves leaping out of the stall. Healing in Scripture usually ends in movement, joy and getting back out into the light.
For the healing still to come
From Revelation 21:4
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away
From Revelation 21:4 · BSB
This is the healing that does not wear off. A chapter later, John sees a river and a tree whose leaves are “for the healing of the nations.” Every recovery in this life points there: real, good, and not yet the end of the story.
A small practice for this week
Choose one verse from this list for the person who is sick, whether that is you or someone you love. Write it on a card and keep it where the medicine is kept, so you read it every time you open that drawer. If you are visiting someone, read it to them once, slowly. Then sit with them a while. You do not have to explain it.
Keep Scripture where your eyes already go
Bible verse and prayer widgets you design yourself, a countdown to the feasts of the year, and a saint for every day.
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Questions
What does the Bible say about healing?
That God heals, and that he cares about bodies as well as souls. Jesus spent much of his ministry healing the sick, and James tells the church to pray over them. The Bible is also honest that healing does not always come in this life: Paul’s thorn stayed, and the full healing is promised in Revelation 21:4.
What is a short Bible verse for healing?
Jeremiah 17:14 begins “Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed.” Psalm 30:2 is another: “O LORD my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.”
What if I pray for healing and nothing changes?
You are in good company. David asked “how long?” and Paul pleaded three times for his thorn to be taken away. Keep praying, keep getting good medical care, and let others pray for you, as James 5:14 says. A slow answer is not the same as no one listening.
Which Bible translation is quoted here?
Every verse in this article is quoted from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB).
How can I keep a healing verse in front of me on my iPhone?
In MySavior’s wallpaper maker you can write any text, such as a verse you are holding on to, over a photograph or one of the app’s themes, save it to Photos at the size of your iPhone’s screen, and choose it as your Lock Screen wallpaper. On the Home Screen, the Bible Verse widget shows short texts from the kinds and topics you pick in Widget Studio, such as Gentle Healing, and moves on to another by itself on the schedule you choose.
