Jeremiah 17:14: a prayer for healing in the middle of a complaint
14Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved. For you are my praise.
The verse this page is about.
Short answer
Jeremiah 17:14 is a short, symmetrical prayer: healing leads to being healed, saving leads to being saved. The closing clause gives the reason for asking — you are my praise. It is not a healing formula but the prayer of a demoralised prophet surrounded by people mocking him.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
The verse is often used on its own, in requests for healing, and it bears that use. But what surrounds it changes the tone of the prayer considerably.
Jeremiah is not described as having an illness. What he describes in the following verses is ridicule: people asking where that word of the Lord he kept announcing had got to, and telling it to hurry up and arrive.
Where this verse appears
The chapter opens with the hard diagnosis about trusting in man and closes with a section about the sabbath. In between, the prophet turns to God in the first person.
One verse earlier he calls God the Hope of Israel and the Source of living waters, and says those who forsake him will be confounded. Today’s request comes immediately after that declaration.
What it says
The structure is an echo: each request is followed by its outcome in the passive. That is not literary decoration — it is a way of saying the healing depends entirely on the one who heals, and not on the effort of the one asking.
The final clause holds everything up. The reason offered is not the prophet’s merit or the severity of his situation: it is that God is his praise. The request rests on who God is, not on who is asking.
What the verse does not do is promise healing. It is a prayer, not a pledge. Reading a request as a guarantee is a common mistake with the psalms and the prophets, and it is easy to make here because the sentence sounds like a statement.
What to do with it today
If you pray for healing — yours or someone else’s — this verse offers an honest shape: ask plainly, without promising yourself the outcome. It is worth praying exactly as it stands, closing clause included.
And note the setting, so you do not judge yourself too harshly. The prophet prays like this in the middle of mockery and discouragement, not on a good day. Prayer does not require you to be well before you make it.
What the passages say
13O Lord, Hope of Israel: all who forsake you will be confounded. Those who withdraw from you will be written into the earth. For they have abandoned the Lord, the Source of living waters.
The verse immediately before, and the basis of the request: God named as the Hope of Israel and the Source of living waters. Today’s prayer leans on that title.
26saying: “If you will listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and obey his commands, and keep all his precepts, I will not bring upon you any of the distress that I imposed on Egypt. For I am the Lord, your healer.”
The passage where God presents himself to the people as their healer, just after the crossing of the sea. It is the background text that gives Jeremiah’s chosen verb its weight.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, heal me, because I do not heal myself. Save me, because I cannot. I am not asking because I deserve it; I am asking because you are the one I praise. Amen.