For Ears That Find Rest in the Old Cadence: 40 Healing Scriptures in the King James Version

By Hayley Louisa Mark

You typed the words king james version on the end of your search on purpose. I noticed. Most people type “healing scriptures” and take whatever wording the page hands them — but you added those three words, and I think I know why, because I do the same thing when I am frightened.

It was a hospital corridor for me, the strip-lit kind, a vinyl chair bolted to the wall and a styrofoam cup of tea going cold in my two hands. Someone I love was behind a door I could not go through yet. I had a verse on my phone, but the modern wording of it slid off me like water off glass — clear, accurate, and somehow too quick, gone before it landed. So I closed my eyes and said the old one to myself instead, the one I had half by heart from childhood: He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. And something in my chest, which had been running fast and shallow, slowed down to the pace of the sentence. Healeth. Bindeth. The long old words made my breath wait for them. I did not choose the King James because I think God prefers Jacobean English. I chose it because, in a corridor like that, it is the wording that makes my body slow down enough to mean it. If that is the corridor you are in tonight, this page is for you.

The short answer. Healing scriptures in the King James Version use the old thee, thou, and the -eth verb endings — healeth, bindeth, forgiveth — and that older cadence genuinely slows the breath, which is the first kindness a frightened body needs. The core KJV healing verses are Exodus 15:26 (“I am the LORD that healeth thee”), Psalm 103:3 (“Who healeth all thy diseases”), Psalm 147:3 (“He healeth the broken in heart”), Jeremiah 17:14 (“Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed”), Isaiah 53:5 (“with his stripes we are healed”), and James 5:14–15. Below are 40, sorted by what hurts, in exact KJV wording — with the NKJV differences noted for those who searched that version instead. None of this is medical advice: keep your doctors and your medicine.

A word about how I quote, and a word of honesty, because you deserve both before you read a single verse. Every verse below is the King James Version, word for word — the thee and thou kept, the -eth endings kept, the punctuation as the old text has it. Where a much-loved healing phrase is not actually in the KJV, or is a paraphrase of it, I will say so plainly rather than let it pass. And I will not promise you what Scripture does not. The Bible holds, with its whole chest, that God can heal, that He does heal, that healing is real and right to ask for boldly. It holds, just as honestly, that God does not always heal every body on this side of heaven — and that His nearness inside the suffering is not a smaller answer or a runner-up prize. A faith that can carry both of those is the only kind sturdy enough for the night you are actually in. None of this is medical advice. Please keep your doctors, take your medicine, make the appointment. Pray and go. They were never rivals.

Why healing scriptures in the King James Version slow the breath

Before the verses, let me answer the question underneath your search — not “are these in the KJV” (they are) but why does the King James wording do something to me the modern one doesn’t? It is not nostalgia, and it is not that God is more present in old English. It is, in part, mechanical, and I find the mechanics comforting rather than disenchanting.

The King James reads slowly because it was built for the ear, not the eye — it was made to be read aloud in a stone church to people who mostly could not read it for themselves. So its sentences fall into a rhythm close to the human breath: clauses the length of one exhale, joined by and after and, so you pause to breathe where the text pauses. The -eth ending adds a whole extra syllable — heal-eth, not heals — and that syllable is a tiny brake. Thee and thou are slower in the mouth than you. None of this is magic. It is prosody: the wording paces your breathing for you, and a paced breath is the first thing a frightened body loses and the first thing it needs back. That is the honest reason the old cadence settles you, and the science note offers a careful account on exactly what that calming does and does not mean, further down the page. Read these aloud, slowly, and let the -eth endings do their quiet work.

Find the verses you came for

This is sorted by what hurts, so you are not reading forty verses to find your one:

When the body is sick

These are the load-bearing KJV healing verses — the ones the old read-aloud recordings are built on. Pray them with your whole chest. Asking plainly is not presumption; God invites it.

1. Exodus 15:26

“…for I am the LORD that healeth thee.”

Listen to the -eth: heal-eth. The modern wording would say “the LORD who heals you,” and it is true, but it goes by faster than your breath can follow. Healeth thee makes you wait a beat on the very word that matters. This is not a thing God does to you from a distance; it is a name He took for Himself. Say the whole slow phrase back to Him.

2. Psalm 103:2–3

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases.”

Three -eth verbs in a row — forgiveth, healeth — falling like slow drops. And do not rush past the small word all. He heals “all thy diseases,” not the minor ones only. Thine and thy are the old possessives, and they make it personal in a way “your” somehow does not: these are thy diseases He is speaking over, the very one you came here carrying.

3. Jeremiah 17:14

“Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.”

The plainest petition in the whole Bible, and in the KJV it has a balance the modern wording loses — heal me / I shall be healed, save me / I shall be saved, the two halves mirroring each other like a held breath in and out. If your strength is gone and you have one prayer left, pray this one exactly as written, thou and all.

4. Psalm 30:2

“O LORD my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.”

This one is in the past tense — somebody else’s healing, already done. On a night when your own faith is too thin to believe it for yourself, the old wording lets you borrow it on credit: lean your weight on a healing God already finished for another, until you can stand again. Thou hast healed — done, sealed, behind us.

5. Psalm 107:20

“He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.”

A verse you rarely see on the lists, and it belongs here. He sent his word — the healing comes the way these very sentences are reaching you, as something spoken and sent. When you read a verse aloud over a sick body, you are doing the small human echo of what this line describes God doing.

6. Matthew 4:23

“…healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.”

“All manner” is the old phrase, and it is roomier than the modern “every.” Set the long Latin name of your diagnosis down beside all manner of sickness, and let the size of His mercy be larger than the size of the word on your chart.

When the diagnosis won’t go away

A different need lives here — not the shock of new illness but the grind of an old one, the condition the doctors have stopped promising to cure and started teaching you to manage. You have prayed the bold verses above and the body has not caught up. This room needs verses that ask less of your performance and more of God’s nearness.

7. 2 Corinthians 12:9

“…My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness…”

Paul asked three times for the thorn to go. It stayed. And the answer he was given — my grace is sufficient for thee — was not a smaller answer but a deeper one. The old for thee lands it personally. When you have begged and the body still aches, this is not the verse of a failed prayer. It is the verse of grace that holds when the cure does not come.

8. Psalm 73:26

“My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.”

It does not pretend. My flesh faileth — flatly, the old word. And then it locates the real you somewhere the failing cannot reach: God is… my portion for ever. The chronic thing tells a story about who you are. This verse tells a truer one.

9. Isaiah 41:10

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Hear how the KJV stacks yea… yea… yea — three small swells, each adding a promise, each giving your breath another place to rest. For the long haul, the word to hold is uphold. Not “carry you out of it” — uphold you in it, a hand under you on the days your own knees have gone.

10. Psalm 34:19

“Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.”

An honest verse for the long road. It does not say the afflictions are few — it says many. It does not deny the weight. It only insists the LORD delivereth — present tense, the slow -eth — out of them all, in His time and not always ours.

When the heart is the wound

Sometimes the healing you came for is not in the body. The wound has a date — the night they left, the morning the phone rang, the funeral — and it does not show on a scan, and the ache lives in your chest like a physical thing. The KJV takes this with total seriousness, and its old verbs are gentle ones.

11. Psalm 147:3

“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

This is the verse from my corridor. Healeth. Bindeth. Both -eth verbs, both slow. Bindeth up is the word for a field dressing — close, hands-on, slow. God does not heal a broken heart at a distance with a wave; He kneels and binds, the way you wrap a wound too tender to leave open. Read it as the literal, tactile thing it says.

12. Psalm 34:18

“The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”

Nigh is the old word for near, and it is softer in the mouth. The nearness is not a reward for grieving well — it is drawn toward the broken heart, the way water runs to the low place. You do not have to pull yourself together for God to come close.

13. Psalm 30:5

“…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

Do not let anyone use this to rush you. May endure honours the night; cometh — slow, certain — only promises that the night is not the last word. The old wording does not minimise the dark. It just refuses to call it the end.

14. Isaiah 61:1

“…he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives…”

To bind up the brokenhearted — the same tender verb as Psalm 147, but now spoken as a commission, the thing Christ was sent to do. Your broken heart is not an interruption of His work. It is His work.

When you’re praying for someone else

Perhaps the body that needs healing is not yours. You are the one in the chair, the one who would trade places and cannot. These are verses to put in your mouth, on their behalf, in the old wording that slows you down enough to mean each one.

15. James 5:14–15

“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up…”

The Bible’s own instruction for this exact moment — and notice it is plural. You were never meant to carry the praying alone. Call for the elders. Let the room fill with more than one voice. Intercession was not designed as a solo act performed by the most exhausted person present.

16. Psalm 41:3

“The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in the time of his sickness.”

Pray this over them, in the third person, exactly as the old text writes it. The bed of languishing — what a phrase; modern versions flatten it to “sickbed,” but languishing names the slow wasting and the weariness both. And thou wilt make all his bed — God tending the very sheets, the way a parent smooths the covers of a feverish child. Your loved one need not rise to be ministered to.

17. 3 John 1:2

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”

When you are frightened for someone, it is easy to imagine God neutral about their body. This verse says otherwise — His posture is wishing them health. Pray it with that wind at your back: you are asking with the grain of His heart, not against it. Even as thy soul prospereth keeps body and soul held together, not pitted against each other.

18. Numbers 6:24–26

“The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

The old priestly blessing — say it over the one you love by name. Bless thee, keep thee, be gracious unto thee. It is built of slow, even clauses, each one an exhale long. There may be no better thing to whisper across a hospital bed.

“By his stripes”: the verse, and the version question

You may have come specifically for this one, and it is also the verse where the KJV-versus-NKJV question gets sharpest, so let me handle both the wording and the honesty together.

19. Isaiah 53:5

“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

In the KJV it is “with his stripes we are healed.” In the NKJV it reads “by His stripes we are healed” — by rather than with — which is why so many people half-remember it as “by his stripes” and then cannot find it in their King James. Both are faithful translations of the same Hebrew; the difference is a preposition, not a doctrine.

20. 1 Peter 2:24

“…by whose stripes ye were healed.”

And here is where the KJV itself uses by — Peter, quoting Isaiah, writes “by whose stripes ye were healed.” Notice, too, Peter’s tense: ye were healed, past and finished. That matters for how we read the promise. This is real, deep Scripture, and a true promise — but in its own context it runs underneath the body’s healing, speaking first of a wholeness purchased at the cross that holds even on the days the cells do not cooperate. Pray it. Lean your weight on it. But do not let anyone tell you that a body still sick means the verse has failed, or that you have. The deepest healing it secures is one no scan can revoke and no relapse can undo. If you are still unwell after praying it, that is not a verdict on your faith — Paul kept his thorn, Timothy his infirmities, and they were not loved less.

A phrase to flag while we are here: “claim your healing” / “sickness must obey” / “rebuke the disease.” The instinct — to pray boldly, to take God’s promises seriously — is good and biblical. But the Bible never frames healing as a transaction your faith forces. When Paul’s thorn stayed, Jesus did not tell him he had under-believed; He gave him sufficient grace instead (2 Corinthians 12:9). The honest reading is Scripture-as-trust, not Scripture-as-a-lever that obligates God. Pray boldly, then trust Him with the outcome — the one part that was never yours to command.

When the wait is the hard part

The room nobody chooses and almost everyone ends up in. The bold verses are prayed, the page is underlined, and the body — or the heart, or the loved one — has not changed. The old words are good company in the grey middle.

21. Psalm 27:14

“Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”

He says wait twice. The KJV keeps the doubling — wait, I say — the verse leaning back in, knowing you will need telling again. Waiting here is not collapse; it is the courageous thing, the active holding-on when there is nothing left to do.

22. Lamentations 3:22–23

“It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”

The mercy is not stockpiled — it is delivered fresh each dawn. New every morning. You were not handed the strength for all of this long wait at once, only for this one morning, which is the only morning you are actually being asked to live. Tomorrow’s mercy will be there tomorrow.

23. Psalm 42:11

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him…”

The psalmist speaks to his own soul, out loud, in the old second person — the way you might steady a frightened friend. Disquieted is the perfect old word for that low, restless dread. Name the heaviness honestly, then gently re-aim the soul: hope thou in God. “Yet” is a small, brave word.

24. Isaiah 40:31

“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

The promise climbs in three steps and then, tellingly, descends — mount up, run, walk. The last and least dramatic is the real gift for a long illness: walk, and not faint. Not soaring. Just the strength to keep putting one foot down, day after grey day, without collapsing.

A note on the NKJV, if that’s what you searched

Many of you typed nkjv on the end instead of kjv, and you deserve a straight answer about what actually changes. The New King James Version keeps the King James structure and dignity but updates the pronouns — you and your for thee, thou, thine — and modernises the verb endings — heals for healeth, binds for bindeth. The meaning is the same; the cadence is a little quicker. Here is the difference on the load-bearing verses, so you can choose with open eyes:

  • Exodus 15:26 — KJV: “I am the LORD that healeth thee.” NKJV: “I am the LORD who heals you.”
  • Psalm 103:3 — KJV: “Who healeth all thy diseases.” NKJV: “Who heals all your diseases.”
  • Psalm 147:3 — KJV: “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.” NKJV: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
  • Isaiah 53:5 — KJV: “with his stripes we are healed.” NKJV: “by His stripes we are healed.”
  • Jeremiah 17:14 — KJV: “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed.” NKJV: “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed” (here they are nearly identical).

Neither is more true. If the older wording slows your breath, pray the KJV. If the thees trip you up and pull you out of the prayer rather than into it, the NKJV carries the same promise at a slightly faster step — and a verse you can actually pray beats a verse you admire from a distance. Choose the wording your own mouth can rest in.

How to pray a verse in the old words

Here is the part with your body in it, because praying a healing verse is not only a thing the mind does — it is something the breath, the chest, and the loosened jaw do too. And the old wording is built to help.

  1. Pick one verse, not forty. The one from the room you actually came for. Put your finger on it.
  2. Exhale first — long and slow — before you read a word. Make the out-breath longer than the in-breath. Let your shoulders fall on the way down.
  3. Read it aloud, slowly, and lean on the old endings. Let heal-eth take its extra syllable. Let thee and thou be slow in your mouth. The cadence is doing half the work of pacing your breath — let it.
  4. Add one true sentence of your own. Not a beautiful one. A true one. Lord, this is the thing that hurts, and I am bringing it to thee because I do not know where else to take it.
  5. Open your hands. Turn the palms up. Let the gesture mean I am asking, and I am not gripping the outcome alone.

A note on the science

There is a real, measurable reason the slow reading these old words encourage settles a frightened body — and it is worth being exact about its limits. When the body is alarmed or in pain, the sympathetic nervous system tightens the jaw, shoulders, and gut and shortens the breath into a shallow, rapid pattern. Reading aloud at the unhurried pace this older English imposes does two specific things: it lengthens the exhale relative to the inhale, and it forces the natural pauses at the ends of clauses. A lengthened, controlled out-breath stimulates the vagus nerve and shifts the body toward the parasympathetic, “rest-and-restore” state; heart rate eases on the exhale. The longer syllables and the and… and… clause structure simply pace the breathing for you. I want to be careful here: this calms the nervous system only. It does not cure a disease, and nothing in this paragraph should be read as a claim that a slow breath or an old sentence can treat illness — please keep your doctors and your medicine. What the paced breath does is quiet the body enough that you can be present to your own prayer instead of drowned out by your own alarm.

—The body-science here reflects established neuroscience of the nervous system. What the science actually says about a settled body → · the research behind these pages

Take the old words with you

You will not remember which verse lived in which room by the time you next need it, and a phone screen is a poor thing to read from over a sickbed. So I made you something to hold.

The KJV Healing Card Set is free — twelve of the verses above in full King James wording, printed large enough to read aloud from a chair or a bed, with the breath-line marked on each so you know where to pause and exhale. Tuck them in a Bible, a hospital bag, a coat pocket.

→ Get the free KJV Healing Card Set — printable, no cost, yours to keep.

And if you want something to walk this season in, one quiet page at a time — a place to write the verse that held you today, the small mercies, the dates, the prayers you could not yet say aloud — our Stilling Waves devotional journal for seasons of healing keeps the old cadence you came here for and gives you room beside it. It does not rush you. It sits with you.

→ See the Stilling Waves journal

Where to go from here

If you came for health in the old words rather than crisis-healing — the everyday stewardship of the body, not the sickbed — that has its own page:

FAQ

Are these healing scriptures really word-for-word in the King James Version?
Yes. Every verse on this page is quoted exactly from the KJV — the thee, thou, thine, and the -eth verb endings all kept, with the old punctuation. Where a popular healing phrase is a paraphrase, or where the KJV and NKJV differ (as with “with his stripes” versus “by His stripes”), I have said so plainly rather than smooth it over.

Why does the King James wording feel more calming than a modern version?
Partly because the KJV was written to be read aloud, so its sentences fall into clauses about the length of one breath, and the extra syllables (healeth rather than heals, thee rather than you) slow your mouth down. A slower, paced breath shifts the body toward its calmer, “rest” state. It is not that God prefers old English — it is that the cadence helps a frightened body settle enough to pray. Read them aloud and let the rhythm do its work.

What is the difference between the KJV and NKJV healing verses?
The meaning is the same; the NKJV updates the pronouns (you for thee) and verb endings (heals for healeth), so it reads a little faster. For example, Exodus 15:26 is “the LORD that healeth thee” in the KJV and “the LORD who heals you” in the NKJV; Isaiah 53:5 is “with his stripes” in the KJV and “by His stripes” in the NKJV. Pray whichever wording your own mouth can rest in.

Does the King James Version promise that God will heal my body?
The Bible — in any version — holds two true things at once: God can and does heal, and healing is good to ask for boldly (Jeremiah 17:14); and God does not always heal every body on this side of heaven (Paul’s thorn, 2 Corinthians 12:9). His nearness in the suffering is not a lesser answer. The old wording does not change that honest tension. And none of it replaces medical care — keep your doctors.

What if I’ve prayed these KJV healing scriptures and I’m still not healed?
Then you are in faithful company — Paul kept his thorn, Timothy his infirmities, Job lost everything, and none of them was loved less. A body not yet healed is not a soul not yet loved, and it is not a verdict on your faith. God’s grace is “sufficient for thee” precisely on the days the cure has not come (2 Corinthians 12:9). Keep praying, keep your doctors, and let His nearness be the answer you did not expect.