# a balm in Gilead

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/balm-in-gilead
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A source of comfort, healing, or consolation for suffering.

## Examples

- Her kind words were a balm in Gilead after a hard day.
- In the worst weeks of his recovery, the letters from old friends were a balm in Gilead.
- The little support group, meeting in a borrowed church hall on Thursday nights, became a balm in Gilead for people who had spent months being told to be strong and had found nowhere else they were allowed simply to grieve.

## Origin

The phrase comes from Jeremiah 8:22, where the prophet, grieving over his stricken people, asks: is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Gilead was a region east of the Jordan famous for a fragrant medicinal resin, so a real remedy stands behind the question. Jeremiah asks it as an anguished, near-rhetorical lament — the cure exists, so why is his people not healed? — but later readers, especially in the African American spiritual tradition, turned the question into an affirmation: there is a balm in Gilead. In English a balm in Gilead now names any genuine source of comfort or healing for pain or sorrow, the phrase having travelled from Jeremiah's despairing question to a settled expression of hope.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.