Berkley Center

While stumping in Greenville South Carolina this past week Mitt Romney botched a scriptural citation. I feel his pain. I am not being cheeky. I really do feel his pain. The former governor of Massachusetts was just minding his own business, standing outside an adoption agency and riffing on the theme of children to assorted journalists and onlookers. CNN’s Peter Hamby who reported the story describes the scene as follows, jittery real-life syntax and all:

"As it says in the Book of Psalms, what is it?," he [Romney] asked. "A hundred and twenty-six. Where did, I think it's the 126 chapter of Psalms, it says effectively this ... I'll be loose ..."

Someone in the crowd corrected him.

"One twenty-seven! I was only one off. A hundred and twenty-seven chapter of Psalms, it says, 'Children are an inheritance of the Lord, happy is he who hath his quiver full of them.'"

I have heard Romney invoke this verse more or less correctly before in discussions about abortion. This time, however, not only was his chapter-and-verse citation a little off, but he quoted a tad inaccurately as well. The King James rendering of Psalm 127:3-5 reads:

"Lo, children are an heritage [not inheritance] of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate."

Although Romney presently has many enemies in the gates of the Palmetto State, I have yet to see any negative readings of this incident make their rounds across the Web. To the best of my knowledge, no conservative Protestant has played the LDS card and exclaimed: "If Romney weren’t so busy reading The Pearl of Great Price or The Book of Mormon, and stuck to our Christian canon, he would have gotten that scripture right.” (If this scenario seems absurd, please recall that some pundits have spent the better part of the week arguing about the precise positioning of Barack Obama’s hands during the playing of the national anthem at a Steak Fry).

Were such an accusation to surface, I would immediately commuter-jet down to South Carolina and testify on behalf of Romney--though to what judicial body I am not certain--pausing solely to sample the local biscuits (about which I have received many enthusiastic reports).

Citing the scriptures with perfect precision, as all biblical scholars know, is a deceptively tricky feat. There are tens of thousands of verses in the Old and New Testaments and consistently remembering their exact contents and addresses would strain the faculties of even the most sober university biblicist. (Admittedly, we tend to think of them in our own translations from the original languages so we usually cite them differently from everyone else).

Incorrect citation is an occupational hazard. Scriptural verses are the small vials of pure form nitroglycerin that a white-gloved exegete handles on a daily basis. Once in a while a mishap occurs.

How many times have I sent my undergraduates racing to a biblical citation which supposedly clinches my argument about, let’s say, an anti-monarchal streak in the Old Testament, only to have one of my puzzled charges read aloud a passage that speaks of the importance of not eating ostriches, nighthawks and seagulls.

My advice to candidates who drop scripture bombs in public is to refrain from chapter-and-verse references. Just mouth the damn words and get on with it! Your target audience (i.e., Evangelicals) knows the Bible inside out; they won’t need chapter and verse to know that you have just referenced the Good Book. And those holding arrows in their hands will have fewer targets of opportunity.