Bible verses before surgery

The deep sleep in Genesis 2

The first time anyone in the Bible is put to sleep so that something can be done to their body, it is in the second chapter:

The LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.Genesis 2:21 · World English Bible

The word for deep sleep is tardemah (8639), and it occurs seven times in the Hebrew Bible. It is not something anyone does. In six of the seven it comes with the ordinary Hebrew verb for falling, and the King James lets you see that in five of them: caused a deep sleep to fall here, a deep sleep fell on Abraham (Genesis 15:12), deep sleep falleth twice in Job (4:13 and 33:15), and Saul’s whole camp, asleep while David walked in and took the spear from beside the king’s head:

So David took the spear and the jar of water from Saul’s head, and they went away. No man saw it, or knew it, nor did any awake; for they were all asleep, because a deep sleep from the LORD had fallen on them.1 Samuel 26:12 · World English Bible

In December 1847, about six weeks after he first used chloroform, the Edinburgh obstetrician James Young Simpson published a pamphlet called Answer to the Religious Objections Advanced Against the Employment of Anaesthetic Agents in Midwifery and Surgery, and Genesis 2:21 was his text. McGill University’s Office for Science and Society tells the story the usual way: critics pointed to the pain in childbirth in Genesis 3:16, and Simpson answered that God “can be regarded as the world’s first anesthetist” (McGill OSS).

How much religious opposition there actually was is now argued over. A 1983 paper by A. D. Farr in Annals of Science asked in its title whether it was a myth. In 2016 A. G. McKenzie, of the Department of Anaesthesia at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, wrote that the story “was gradually embellished in historical articles”, then went to the Edinburgh maternity hospital’s case-book for the eleven months either side of the pamphlet. Anesthesia in childbirth rose markedly after it, which he says “supports the existence of opposition to obstetric anaesthesia and the success of Simpson’s pamphlet in overcoming it”, though chloroform itself had arrived about six weeks earlier and “may also have contributed” (International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia). So the pamphlet is real and the verse was in it. The picture of a church lined up against pain relief is the part to hold loosely.

None of that makes Genesis 2 a chapter about anesthesia. What it does show is that the oldest picture of a person put under, in the Bible, is of someone who is not alone in the room while they sleep.

The prayer and the figs

Hezekiah, king of Judah, was sick unto death, and the prophet Isaiah told him to set his house in order. He turned his face to the wall, prayed and wept, and Isaiah had not yet left the middle court when he was sent back (2 Kings 20:1-4):

Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.2 Kings 20:5 · King James Version

And then, two verses later, in the same story:

Isaiah said, “Take a cake of figs.” They took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.2 Kings 20:7 · World English Bible

The prayer, the tears, the promise and a fig poultice sit side by side, and the text does not say how they relate. The commentators divide. Barnes calls figs “the usual remedy in the East” for ordinary boils, but says they could not by themselves cure what Hezekiah had. The Cambridge Bible quotes Gerard’s Herball on figs “made into the form of a plaister”. Ellicott cites Dioscorides and Pliny for figs as an ancient remedy for boils, and also quotes Cheyne, who read the figs as “a sign or symbol of the cure, like the water of the Jordan in the narrative of Naaman” (commentaries). We are not going to settle it. Isaiah tells the same story and puts the figs at the very end of his chapter 38, after the king’s own psalm, looking back: For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs. What nobody disputes is that the man who prayed also had something put on the wound, and that it was the prophet who told them to.

The rest of the Bible takes doctors for granted. Paul’s letters send greetings from Luke, the beloved physician (Colossians 4:14), and when Jesus needs an obvious picture he uses one: They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick (Matthew 9:12).

“When I wake up, I am still with you”

The verse at the top of the list is easy to miss, because it is the end of a sentence about counting. The psalmist tries to count God’s thoughts, finds them more than the sand, and then wakes. Ellicott says “the original is more expressive” and renders it “I have awaked—and still with thee.” The commentators read the waking in more than one way. The Cambridge Bible takes it as sleep: “His last thoughts as he falls asleep are of God; and when he awakes, he finds himself still in His Presence.” Barnes reads it first as coming out of deep thought, and then offers the reading this page is for: “When mine are closed in sleep, thou art round about me; when I awake from that unconscious state, I find the same thing existing still.” The ancient Aramaic Targum took it as waking in the world to come, which the Cambridge Bible says “cannot be their original meaning” (commentaries).

Psalm 121, also in the list, is the other half of the same thought: He who keeps you will not slumber. Someone is awake while you are not. Our verses about sleep look at the two Hebrew words in that line.

If you are the one in the waiting room

The person in the bed sleeps through it. The person in the waiting room does not. Psalm 130 is for them: My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. The line is said twice in both translations, which is what waiting is like. Its I wait for the LORD is qavah (6960), the same verb as Psalm 40:1, and our page on patience has a whole section on it. If what you are waiting with is fear rather than hope, our verses for anxiety are closer to the mark.

What these verses do not promise

• None of them promises how the operation will go. I will heal you was said to Hezekiah, by name, through a prophet. Isaiah 41:10 promises company and strength, not an outcome, and Isaiah 43:2 says when you pass through the waters, not that you will be spared them. If the news afterwards is hard, our pages on healing and hope are honest about that.
• They are not instead of the instructions. Ask your surgical team what you need to know before the day, including when to stop eating and drinking and which of your usual medicines to take, and put your questions about the anesthesia to the anesthesiologist. MedlinePlus, from the US National Library of Medicine, has plain-language pages on surgery and anesthesia. Hezekiah had the figs as well as the prayer.
• Being afraid is not a failure of faith. Psalm 56:3 begins When I am afraid, not if. Our verses about fear go further into it.