The Heresy of Sirach – Healing Apart from the Name
The divine prescription in James leads through repentance, confession, and the Name above all Names. But Sirach offered another path – a counterfeit remedy that has deceived generations. It honors the physician and elevates medicine, yet leads away from Yeshua. It is a heresy still defended in pulpits today. As this chapter will reveal, it does not lead to life – it leads to judgment.
Let us examine Sirach 38:1-15 – a passage excluded from the Hebrew Bible but long included in the Christian Apocrypha. Although rejected by the Jewish canon, the early Church Fathers included Sirach in their accepted texts, and for nearly two millennia it appeared in Catholic and Protestant Bibles alike. Its influence cannot be overstated.
Sirach was written by Jesus Ben Sira, a Jew living in Egypt – a land Yahweh repeatedly warned His people not to return to. That alone raises fundamental questions about how it came to shape Christian thought. As we will see, the healing theology of Sirach 38 has long been interpreted as a call to honor physicians, but a closer look reveals that this passage may not have been promoting medicine at all. It may, in fact, have been warning against it.
“Honor the physician with the honor due him, according to your need of him, for the Lord created him.” (Sirach 38:1)
This is the very deception this book seeks to expose: that healing can come apart from repentance and apart from the Name of Yeshua. The Gospel calls us to call upon Yeshua. Sirach appears to tell the Jews (and later Gentile Christians) to call the secular healers of that era. All humans were created by Him – but none but Yeshua can truly heal.
In 175 BC, physicians were neither authorized nor capable healers in the biblical sense – they could not make anyone whole. In fact, they really weren’t even physicians as we know them today. Yahweh had made it clear to the Israelites in the Torah that He was the God constantly healing them. (Ex 15:26) He also made it abundantly clear that He would make them sick or diseased if they did not obey His commands and statutes. (Ex 15:26, Dt 28:27-28) Then, He made it clear that they were not to listen or turn to “other gods or serve them or follow their practices.” (Ex 23:24, Dt 18:14) Yahweh told them many times that serving and obeying Him was the only remedy for the sickness and disease disobedience causes. The sickness they would receive through disobedience could only be healed through worshipful obedience.
And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. (Ex 23:25)
This was the only way to be healed – until Yeshua was given all authority to save and heal.
Sirach’s Lasting Influence – Probably Misunderstood
Christ had not been born, yet this verse has shaped Christian thinking for generations. By granting honor to a profession that Scripture consistently views with skepticism, it lays the foundation for a theology that justifies dependence on human remedies instead of Yahweh. That is, medicines instead of obedience and doctors instead of Yeshua.
This appears to affirm medical science as Yahweh’s gift. But as with Eden’s fruit, what appears to promise healing may bring death. The truth was buried in the final verse – and when I saw it, everything changed.
“Whoever sins against his Maker, let him fall into the hands of the physician.” (Sirach 38:15)
At first glance, it seems consistent with what came before. But as I studied the Greek more closely, I discovered something that shook me: the phrase “fall into” is from the Greek word ἐμπέσοι – a term never used in a positive sense anywhere in Scripture. It means to be cast into, entrapped by, or delivered into judgment.
This is the same word used in Luke 10:36, where a man “fell among thieves,” and in Hebrews 10:31: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” It does not imply rescue – it implies peril. It implies consequences.
Additionally, Sirach 38:2 reads:
“For of the most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour of the king.”
If healing is from Yahweh, why is the physician honored by kings? The kings in Egypt were the pharaohs who did honor the physician/sorcerer. Jews knew of King Asa turning to the secular healers.
Or, Sirach 38:9 reads:
My son, when you are ill, do not delay, but pray to God, for it is he who heals. NAB
If it is Yahweh who heals when we pray to Him urgently, why the need for the physician? (It must be noted this is the imperative verb mood form “pray.”)
That was the moment I realized the truth: Sirach 38 may have been satirical. Or at the very least, misinterpreted for centuries. The problem is, the Gentile Church apparently liked how it could be translated and understood.1 So, they included it in the Biblical Canon.
Even Yahweh Himself spoke with irony when He asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jer. 8:22). The implied answer was yes – but it was no cure at all. The people had turned to physicians because they had refused to turn to Yahweh.
Not Deceived – Warned
As the final layer of this deception unfolded, there remained one more troubling verse in Sirach 38 worth examining: verse 4.2
“The Lord has created medicines out of the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them.” (Sirach 38:4)
This verse as translated in the KJV doesn’t just “shake the entire passage” like verse 15, it destroys all the arguments made by those who say pharmakeia isn’t the good medicine.
The Greek word used here for “medicines” is pharmaka – a term directly related to pharmakeia, the word used throughout the New Testament to describe sorcery or magical arts (Gal. 5:20; Rev. 18:23). So, in every other scriptural context, pharmakeia is evil – condemned. It is never described as a blessing, let alone something Yahweh created to heal. In Ex 22:18, the LXX uses pharmakos for sorceress – a poisoner. And, while the ‘physic’ or natural herbs of the biblical era were mostly harmless, Yeshua had to heal the woman who spent all her money on worthless physicians and their remedies.
She had borne much agony under the care of many physicians and had spent all she had, but to no avail. Instead, her condition had only grown worse. (Mark 5:26)
Perhaps she was fortunate they didn’t have today’s medications – she might have died on them or in surgery. This is supposed to be the Word of Yahweh. As if Yeshua would tell someone sick to go to a “worthless” secular healer (physician). He didn’t – as you will clearly see in next chapter.
So, what should we make of Sirach’s statement? Is this a translation error, or the first and only place in Scripture where the term “medicine” is used positively?
It may be neither
If verse 15 reveals that falling into the hands of a physician is a consequence for sin, not a commendation, then verse 4 may be part of the same pattern. It is unlikely affirming pharmaka as holy. It may be recording a common belief of the time, or even laying the groundwork for irony. If so, Sirach 38 stands as a warning against trusting substances that elsewhere in Scripture are tools of deception and judgment. Tools used by the secular healers to ensnare the users into committing idolatry.
If pharmakeia is condemned in Paul’s letters as a “work of the flesh,” and listed alongside idolatry, then we must be careful before using Sirach 38:4 to support modern pharmacology. The word itself betrays the spirit of the passage. The supposed “gift” turns out to be a trap.
And Sirach 38:15 is not a final affirmation of medical authority. The popular belief that “Yahweh acts through physicians3 to cure the ill” is heresy. Yahweh acts through the Name of Yeshua. Sadly, it must be some other god they refer to.
It was never about trusting a doctor. It was about the fate of the one who rejects his Maker.
And the hands he falls into? Flesh. Dust. Man. The hands of the serpent himself – offering help, delivering judgment.
The silence of the apostles toward Sirach 38 confirms this. Yeshua and His disciples quoted freely from the Septuagint, and the early Church accepted several other wisdom passages found in that collection. Yet none of them ever cited Sirach 38’s praise of physicians. If its counsel had been divine truth, it would have appeared again in the teaching of the New Covenant. Instead, the apostles spoke only of healing through repentance, faith, and the Name of Yeshua—never through human medicine. Their silence is not oversight; it is testimony.
FOOTNOTES
- Sirach was a Greek translation of the Hebrew written by his grandfather in 180 BCE. Those records are not available anymore to test against the original. We just know neither the translation nor the original was acceptable as Hebrew doctrine. Perhaps Sirach 38 provides the reason.
- The term pharmaka (φάρμακα), translated here as “medicines,” is the plural of pharmakon, which by the Hellenistic period referred to substances with both healing and poisonous qualities, depending on use and intent. While some lexicons treat it neutrally, its semantic overlap with pharmakeia (φαρμακεία) – condemned in the New Testament (Gal. 5:20; Rev. 18:23) – is significant. In fact, pharmakeia was commonly understood in Greek literature to refer to magical potions and incantations, not merely physical treatments. The Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon notes that pharmakon could mean “a drug, charm, spell, or poison,” and its moral connotation depended largely on context. In the Septuagint, pharmakeia and related terms (pharmakos, pharmakon) often appear in pejorative contexts (cf. Exod. 22:18 LXX; Isa. 47:9). This linguistic backdrop undercuts modern efforts to reinterpret pharmaka in Sirach 38:4 as a benign endorsement of pharmacological healing. It is more plausible that the term reflects either the worldview of the Hellenistic Jewish author or serves, within the irony of the chapter, as a warning.
See Liddell, H.G., Scott, R., & Jones, H.S. (LSJ), A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940, s.v. “φάρμακον.” - In his paper No Other Gods: The Danger of Medical Idolatry, theology professor Michael L. Chiavone examines the role of physicians in the context of Sirach 38. He argues that the passage does not depict physicians as mediators between God and humanity. Chiavone emphasizes that seeking healing solely through physicians, without turning to the Lord, reflects a form of idolatry, as it places trust in human agents over divine intervention. He notes, “That Asa going to the physicians was in any sense not going to the Lord shows that these physicians were not mediators, so none can be assumed to be.” This perspective challenges interpretations that equate honoring physicians with honoring God, suggesting instead that true healing is rooted in divine, not merely human, agency.digitalcommons.cedarville.edu
Leave a Reply