Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 355 · December 21
Vision and Restraint
“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”
Somebody has quoted this at you in a planning meeting, and the sense was unmistakable: without a leader casting a vision, the congregation will die. The trouble is that the verse has been made to say something the rest of the Bible never asks it to say, and half the room felt it happen.
Line the versions up. Ten English Bibles sit on this app's shelf, and nine say the same thing: where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint, run wild, are unrestrained, are made naked. The KJV alone reads perish. That is a striking count for a sermon preached for decades, and the Hebrew verb settles it. It is the word used at the golden calf, where the KJV says Moses saw that the people were naked and the newer Bibles say they had broken loose. It describes a crowd with nothing over it.
Then read the second half, which is the proverb's own definition of the first. But he that keepeth the law, happy is he. Hebrew proverbs work in pairs, and the opposite of vision here turns out to be law not kept. Vision there is the prophet's word for what God has said, revelation and not strategy. Look at the company it keeps: three verses up, the rod and reproof give wisdom. One up, correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest. One down, a servant will not be corrected by words. The neighbourhood is restraint, and the proverb sits in the middle of it saying what happens to people who have none.
The famous verse turns out to be about a people who have stopped hearing anything from God and are doing as they please in consequence. That leaves the proverb saying something more uncomfortable than the version quoted at you. Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 355 is Strengthened in the Inner Man (Ephesians 3:16).