The Word Abused . . .

“Where There is No Vision, the People Perish”

In our mishandling of the scriptures we sometimes not only make them say what was never intended by the writer, but we have them convey a meaning that is contrary both to logic and common sense. Such is the case with Pro. 29:18a, which reads as above in the King James. The second part of the verse is never quoted, for it would confuse the point that is intended to be made. It reads: “but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

Perhaps it is not a serious abuse of the word, but it is one more example of how we use the Bible improperly. We should break such bad habits, and one way is for someone to call attention to them.

This line is made to mean what is not necessarily the case at all, which is that a person or a church will perish or fail or prove ineffective if he or it does not show foresight and ambition in the work that is before him. It is often applied to elders: if they do not have vision (such as making ambitious plans for the church), the work that they lead will come upon hard times. It will perish —just what this means is never elaborated upon. But the idea is that they should get with it and lead the congregation with imagination, or else the thing is likely to go down the drain. They are clobbered with Pr. 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

We all recognize that persons and churches are better off when they are perceptive and imaginative, but the lack of this does not necessarily spell disaster. Some of our oldest congregations have not been exactly perceptive, and even some of the “successful” ones in terms of size and influence are not known for their creativity and imaginative contemplation, if we can make “vision” mean all those things. Still they haven’t perished. Many congregations that seem to be immune to change and reactionary to any kind of productive planning manage to stay alive. Sometimes they thrive on their orthodoxy. They certainly haven’t perished. I am not sure that I could name even one church that has gone out of business for a lack of perceptive vision. Some elderships literally run off some of their best people, showing themselves to be completely imperceptive of the needs of the community of saints they serve. But since they are “right” and “orthodox” they manage to stay very much alive. I see no “vision” at all in their conduct, but they hardly “perish” in any sense of the term.

So with an individual. Some of the poorest planned lives seem somehow to turn out all right, while the most contemplative people, including those who save something for their latter years, are often the ones that “perish” in the reverses and tragedies that the best of planning could not avert. The simple truth is that “the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley¹.” Life is like that. It just isn’t the case that if people show vision they will succeed, and that if they don’t they’ll fail —not always, to be sure. Yet we grant that insight and perception and vision are qualities to be cultivated in us all.

But that isn’t what Pro. 29:18 is talking about, and this illustrates how careless men can be in the way they handle the scriptures, making them teach what was never intended and what isn’t necessarily true in the first place. This is to abuse the word, imposing upon it what we want it to say, as if we were saying, “If it doesn’t mean that, it ought to!”

The word for vision in Pro. 29:18 comes from a Hebrew term that appears scores of times in the Old Covenant scriptures, and it is always related to prophecy. Such as Jer. 14:14, referring to the false prophets: “They prophesy unto you a false vision,” and Nah. 1:1, where the prophet’s words are referred to as “the book of the vision of Nahum.” Dan. 1:17 says Daniel had understanding “in all visions” and in Ezek. 12:22 and Micah 3:6 “vision” means the same as prophecy.

There are other passages that are similar to Pro. 29:18. Ezek. 7:26: “Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumor shall be upon rumor; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest. and counsel from the ancients.” This almost says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Lam. 2:9 is similar: “Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.” Jerusalem is here described as being in a bad way, perishing, and one reason is that her prophets no longer have visions (prophecies) from the Lord.

Now let us read the passage in question in the Revised Standard: “Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.”

The meaning is clear enough. When people do not have God’s word to look to as it is revealed through His servants the prophets, they are in a bad way. They will “get out of hand,” as one version puts it, or they will become undisciplined —or they will perish, as the King James puts it. The passage is saying that people must have God’s word. They just can’t make it otherwise. “Where there is no vision (revelations from God through his prophets), the people perish.” The next line now fits: “but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

We must cease using the scriptures as if they were some vending machine, cranking out for us whatever commodity we are looking for at the time. We might well perish, using the Bible like that! —the Editor