Prayer Is Like a Balm That Heals Every Illness

Prayer is effective for all things. We find that it brings healing to the sick — as it did for Hezekiah, of whom it is written:

“I have heard your prayer… I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the House of Hashem.” (2 Kings 20:5)

Prayer also averts death. When Israel sinned with the Golden Calf, Hashem said to Moses, “Leave Me alone, and I will destroy them” — yet they were spared through Moses’s prayer. Similarly, Jonah was saved from the belly of the great fish through his prayer.

Prayer opens the womb of the barren. As it is written: “Isaac pleaded with Hashem… and Hashem granted his plea” (Genesis 25:21), and Hannah, too, was remembered and given a child through her prayer.

Prayer brings relief from famine: “There was a famine in the days of David for three years, and David sought the face of Hashem” (2 Samuel 21:1).

Prayer turns the tide of war. Of the war against Sennacherib the verse says: “Hezekiah the king prayed… and Hashem sent an angel who struck down every mighty warrior” (2 Kings 19:15–35).

Prayer even works for opposite and contradictory needs. Moses prayed, “Remember Abraham…” — asking Hashem to call the patriarchs to mind — while Asaph prayed, “Do not remember against us the sins of our forebears…” (Psalms 79:8), asking Hashem to forget. Prayer, it turns out, avails for remembrance and for forgetting alike. No other commandment (mitzvah) is found to be effective for all these different things — only prayer.

Prayer also helps in every kind of calamity. As Solomon declared in his great prayer:

“Whatever plague, whatever sickness there may be — pestilence, famine, blight, locusts, or caterpillars — every affliction and every disease…” (1 Kings 8:37–38)

Prayer likewise brings salvation from trouble and from exile. Of the bondage in Egypt it is written: “They cried out, and their plea rose up to God from their labor… and God heard their groaning” (Exodus 2:23–24). And it was through the prayers of Daniel and Ezra that Israel was brought up from exile.

We see, then, that prayer is like the tzori — the healing balm of Gilead — which contains remedies for every kind of illness and is beneficial for every constitution. In the same way, prayer is effective for every kind of person. Solomon himself said of the stranger who comes from a distant land:

“And also the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel…” (1 Kings 8:41)

And prayer avails even for the utterly wicked, as we learn from the account of Manasseh’s prayer (2 Chronicles 33:12–13).

(From Otzar Tefillot Yisrael, citing the author of Sefer HaIkkarim)