EXOD233 There is an essential existential dilemma: if Jews believe that events and many experiences in their lives come directly from God (including sickness), then what right does man have to interfere with the desires of God (for a person to suffer through sickness) and take away that malady and pain? It is for this reason that many religions actually forbid physicians from treating the ill (Christian scientists, for example). The Rabbis discuss this issue and martial sources on both sides of this moral question. On the one hand, is very clear in Jewish thought that sickness comes directly from God, often as a reaction to immoral actions by man. That is why God promises a life of health without sickness for those that follow in God's ways. King David said that God, not doctors, protects individual from sickness and keeps a person alive, (Psalms 41:2–3) and each weekday traditional Jews pray to God three times a day, as the ultimate doctor and healer, to remove any and all sicknesses. (Eighth blessing of Shemoneh Esreh). How then are doctors ever allowed to step in and heal according to Jewish thought? Where is the logic? Since the Torah itself discusses paying doctor bills as part of restitution for damages, the Talmud citesthis verse as "permission" for doctors to heal.(Exodus 21:19, Berachot 60a). But how does it work? Since God knows that doctors exist and have the ability to heal in society, when He brings sickness upon an individual, God wants that doctor to administer medicine and heal the patient. Therefore, if a person contracts an illness that would normally take three weeks to heal without medicine, and the doctor can eliminate the malady in a week, then God intentionally wanted the person to be ill for a week, not three weeks. In this way, the physician actually partners with God in healing human beings. But even as the doctor prescribes treatment, Jews believe that the healing still comes from God-not the doctor. Chovot Halevavot, chapter 4.