Amsal 16:9

16:9 A person ¹  plans his course, ² 

but the Lord directs ³  his steps. ⁴ 

Amsal 19:21

19:21 There are many plans ⁵  in a person’s mind, ⁶ 

but it ⁷  is the counsel ⁸  of the Lord which will stand.

[16:9]  ¹ tn Heb “the heart of a man.” This stresses that it is within the heart that plans are made. Only those plans that are approved by God will succeed.

[16:9]  ² tn Heb “his way” (so KJV, NASB).

[16:9]  ³ tn The verb כּוּן (kun, “to establish; to confirm”) with צַעַד (tsa’ad, “step”) means “to direct” (e.g., Ps 119:133; Jer 10:23). This contrasts what people plan and what actually happens – God determines the latter.

[16:9]  ⁴ sn “Steps” is an implied comparison, along with “way,” to indicate the events of the plan as they work out.

[19:21]  ⁵ sn The plans (from the Hebrew verb חָשַׁב [khashav], “to think; to reckon; to devise”) in the human heart are many. But only those which God approves will succeed.

[19:21]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the heart of a man” (cf. NAB, NIV). Here “heart” is used for the seat of thoughts, plans, and reasoning, so the translation uses “mind.” In contemporary English “heart” is more often associated with the seat of emotion than with the seat of planning and reasoning.

[19:21]  ⁷ tn Heb “but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand.” The construction draws attention to the “counsel of the Lord”; it is an independent nominative absolute, and the resumptive independent pronoun is the formal subject of the verb.

[19:21]  ⁸ tn The antithetical parallelism pairs “counsel” with “plans.” “Counsel of the Lord” (עֲצַת יְהוָה, ’atsat yehvah) is literally “advice” or “counsel” with the connotation of “plan” in this context (cf. NIV, NRSV, NLT “purpose”; NCV “plan”; TEV “the Lord’s will”).

[19:21]  sn The point of the proverb is that the human being with many plans is uncertain, but the Lord with a sure plan gives correct counsel.