Proverbs 17:22 · Subject · Joy
Joy and the Body
Eight studies published from 2001 to 2019 measured positive emotion, laughter and health, and the largest found no direct link between happiness and death once earlier health was counted.
A proverb of Solomon calls the joyful heart good medicine, and medical researchers have spent two decades measuring how far that holds in the body.
A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.
- Book
- Proverbs
- Hold in memory
- Proverbs 17:22
Summary
Proverbs 17:22 sets a joyful heart beside good medicine and a broken spirit beside dry bones, as a proverb of how life usually goes. Studies since 2001 have found that people with more positive emotion tend to fare better in health, most clearly among people who were healthy when first measured. The largest single study, of 719,671 women, found that poor health can cause unhappiness and that unhappiness itself did not raise the death rate, and the studies of laughter are weak. Scripture commands joy because of who the Lord is, and the studies stand beside that command as later and smaller witnesses.
- Yoichi Chida and Andrew Steptoe (2008) pooled 35 studies of healthy people and found a hazard ratio for death of 0.82 with more positive well-being, against 0.98 across 35 studies of people already ill.
- Bette Liu and her colleagues (2016) followed 719,671 women for about ten years and found that unhappiness was not linked to death once self-rated health and lifestyle were allowed for.
- Rod Martin (2001) found the effects of humour and laughter on health inconsistent, with no evidence that more humour brings a longer life.
- The outcomes the studies measured were cortisol, heart rate, verified colds and death rates, and none of them measured endorphins released by laughter.
What Scripture Says of Joy and the Body
Six verses of the wisdom books and the Psalms set the inner life beside the body.
Joy is the gladness Scripture commands of God's people because of who God is, and the Bible shows it in the body. Proverbs speaks of a cheerful face and of bones that dry up or are nourished, and the Psalms speak of crushed bones that rejoice and of mouths filled with laughter. Many readers now ask what medical research has found about joy, laughter and health.
The question this subject answers is what the studies have measured and how much weight their findings bear beside the text. The page sets out the verses first and then five studies side by side in a table. After that come the research on laughter, a major review of the field, the Hebrew of Proverbs 17:22 and the limits of the research. Two old commentators, the debate over which way the link runs, and the ground on which the command to rejoice stands close the page.
Proverbs 17:22 stands among the proverbs of Solomon that begin at Proverbs 10:1, sayings given for gaining wisdom, so it describes how the heart and the body go together in ordinary life.
A joyful heart makes a cheerful countenance, but sorrow of the heart crushes the spirit.The proverb shows the inner life showing itself on the face.
The light of the eyes cheers the heart, and good news nourishes the bones.The proverb links what a person hears to the strength of the body.
Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones You have crushed rejoice.The prayer asks for a gladness that reaches the body after confession of sin.
Then our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with shouts of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”The return from captivity brought song to the people, and the peoples around them credited God with it.
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,The Teacher gives the body's gladness its own season under God beside grief.
Psalm 51:8, Psalm 126:2, Ecclesiastes 3:4
Five Studies Side by Side
Five studies from 2001 to 2016 measured positive emotion against illness and death in five different groups of people.
Four studies found better health or a lower death rate among people with more positive emotion, and the largest found no direct effect on death once earlier health was counted.
| Study | Who was studied | What was found (a ratio of 1.0 means no difference) |
|---|---|---|
| Danner, Snowdon and Friesen, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001 | 180 Catholic nuns whose handwritten autobiographies, written at a mean age of 22, were scored for emotional content | "A stepwise decrease in risk of mortality resulting in a 2.5-fold difference between the lowest and highest quartiles" of positive emotion, with survival measured from age 75 to 95 |
| Cohen, Doyle, Turner, Alper and Skoner, Psychosomatic Medicine, 2003 | 334 healthy volunteers given a cold virus by nasal drops in quarantine | A lower risk of a verified cold with a more positive emotional style, "in a dose-response manner"; an adjusted relative risk of 2.9 between the lowest and the highest third |
| Steptoe, Wardle and Marmot, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005 | Adults whose momentary happiness was sampled across a working day | Happiness "was inversely related to cortisol output over the day" and to heart rate, with smaller fibrinogen responses to stress in happier people |
| Chida and Steptoe, Psychosomatic Medicine, 2008 | A meta-analysis of 35 studies of initially healthy people and 35 of people with disease | A combined hazard ratio for death of 0.82 (95 percent interval 0.76 to 0.89) in the healthy and 0.98 (0.95 to 1.00) in the ill |
| Liu, Floud, Pirie, Green, Peto and Beral, The Lancet, 2016 | 719,671 women of the UK Million Women Study, followed for about ten years | Unhappiness "was not associated with mortality from all causes" after allowing for self-rated health and lifestyle: a rate ratio of 0.98 (95 percent interval 0.94 to 1.01) for unhappy against happy most of the time |
Laughter and the Proverb
Proverbs speaks of the joyful heart, and the research on laughter itself is weaker than the research on positive emotion.
Proverbs 17:22 names the joyful heart as the medicine, and another proverb sets laughter apart from the state of the heart.
Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in sorrow.The proverb warns that a cheerful face can hide grief, so in Proverbs the outward sign and the inward state can part company.
Rod Martin reviewed the published research on humour, laughter and physical health in Psychological Bulletin in 2001. He found the effects on immunity inconsistent and the studies beset by methodological problems. He found some easing of pain, "although similar findings are obtained with negative emotions", and "no evidence of increased longevity with greater humor".
C. Natalie van der Wal and Robin Kok pooled the trials of laughter therapies in Social Science and Medicine in 2019. They found that such therapies "can improve depression", with simulated laughter doing better than humour. They also judged that "overall study quality was low, with substantial risk of bias in all studies".
A Review of the Field
A major review found steady links between positive feeling and health, and serious doubts about the methods behind them.
Sarah Pressman and Sheldon Cohen reviewed the research in Psychological Bulletin in 2005. They found trait positive affect associated with lower illness, fewer symptoms and less pain, and with longer life among older people living in the community.
The same review "raises serious conceptual and methodological reservations" about the field. It finds the research on surviving serious illness "is inconsistent", and it adds that intense positive feeling brings a short-term arousal that is "potentially harmful".
The Hebrew of Proverbs 17:22
The proverb pairs a common word for joyful with a word for medicine that stands nowhere else.
The word for joyful in Proverbs 17:22 is sameach (שָׂמֵחַ, Strong's H8056), which the lexicon glosses as blithe or gleeful. It stands 21 times in the tagged Hebrew text.
The word for medicine is gehah (גֵּהָה, H1456), which the lexicon glosses as a cure. It stands only in this verse in the tagged Hebrew text.
The verse sets lev sameach, a joyful heart, against ruach nekheah, a stricken spirit, and the cure of the first line against the dried bone, gerem, of the second.
The Limits of the Research
Each study measured a mood, a symptom, a hormone or a death rate, and its finding reaches only as far as its measure.
The outcomes the studies measured were cortisol, heart rate, verified colds and death rates. None of them measured endorphins released by laughter or a general strengthening of the immune system from joy.
The nun study and the Million Women Study watched people over time without assigning them a mood, so they show an association and leave the cause open.
The claim that joy makes a person live longer goes beyond these sources, because the Million Women Study, the largest of them, found no such effect after allowing for health.
Chida and Steptoe themselves wrote, "There were indications of publication bias in this literature."
Joy as Strength and as Medicine
An eighteenth-century commentator and a nineteenth-century preacher each tied joy to the health of the body.
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
John Wesley, on Nehemiah 8:10, finds that rejoicing in God gives strength to the body as well as to the mind.
“Strength - Rejoicing in God in serving him with chearfulness, and thankfulness, which is your duty always, but now especially, will give you that strength both of mind and body, which you greatly need, both to perform all the duties required of you, and to oppose all the designs of your enemies.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament · on Nehemiah 8:10Evangelical
Charles Spurgeon opened his sermon Joy, a Duty, on Philippians 4:4, by calling joy the best of all medicines and the one medicine that is sweet to the taste.
Which Way the Link Runs
Researchers divide over whether positive emotion protects health or whether good health produces positive emotion.
Researchers read the same associations in two directions, and each reading has its holders and its objection.
Positive emotion protects healthDanner, Snowdon and Friesen; Chida and Steptoe
Danner and her colleagues measured emotion in writings made more than half a century before the deaths they counted. Chida and Steptoe pooled cohorts whose members were free of disease at the start, and both designs place the emotion before the outcome.
The objection is that the Million Women Study, allowing for self-rated health, found no direct link, and that a pooled estimate carries whatever bias the published studies carry.
Good health produces happinessLiu and her colleagues
Liu and her colleagues concluded that "poor health can cause unhappiness", so that the earlier links between happiness and long life may reflect health itself.
Against this reading, the women rated their own happiness, a different measure from those of the cohorts that found a link.
The Command Rests on God
The research agrees with the proverb in part, though its largest study traces much of the link to health itself. Scripture commands joy for another reason, because the Lord Himself is its ground, and the command would stand if every study were overturned.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!Paul places the joy in the Lord and repeats the command, so the reason to rejoice is the Lord Himself.
You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.The psalmist finds the fullness of gladness in God's presence, the ground on which the command stands.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Hebrew words of Proverbs 17:22, STEP Bible tagged text (CC BY 4.0), with Strong's numbers H3820, H8056, H1456, H7307, H5218, H3001 and H1634.
- The Strong's lexicon entries for H8056 and H1456.
- Deborah D. Danner, David A. Snowdon and Wallace V. Friesen, Positive emotions in early life and longevity: findings from the nun study, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 5 (2001): 804 to 813.
- Sheldon Cohen, William J. Doyle, Ronald B. Turner, Cuneyt M. Alper and David P. Skoner, Emotional style and susceptibility to the common cold, Psychosomatic Medicine 65, no. 4 (2003): 652 to 657.
- Sarah D. Pressman and Sheldon Cohen, Does positive affect influence health?, Psychological Bulletin 131, no. 6 (2005): 925 to 971.
- Andrew Steptoe, Jane Wardle and Michael Marmot, Positive affect and health-related neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and inflammatory processes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, no. 18 (2005): 6508 to 6512.
- Yoichi Chida and Andrew Steptoe, Positive psychological well-being and mortality: a quantitative review of prospective observational studies, Psychosomatic Medicine 70, no. 7 (2008): 741 to 756.
- Rod A. Martin, Humor, laughter, and physical health: methodological issues and research findings, Psychological Bulletin 127, no. 4 (2001): 504 to 519.
- C. Natalie van der Wal and Robin N. Kok, Laughter-inducing therapies: systematic review and meta-analysis, Social Science and Medicine 232 (2019): 473 to 488.
- Bette Liu, Sarah Floud, Kirstin Pirie, Jane Green, Richard Peto and Valerie Beral, Does happiness itself directly affect mortality? The prospective UK Million Women Study, The Lancet 387, no. 10021 (2016): 874 to 881.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765, on Nehemiah 8:10.
- Charles H. Spurgeon, Joy, a Duty, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2405, published 1895, CCEL text.
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