Isaiah 46:10-11

46:10 who announces the end from the beginning

and reveals beforehand ¹  what has not yet occurred,

who says, ‘My plan will be realized,

I will accomplish what I desire,’

46:11 who summons an eagle ²  from the east,

from a distant land, one who carries out my plan.

Yes, I have decreed, ³ 

yes, I will bring it to pass;

I have formulated a plan,

yes, I will carry it out.

Job 23:13

23:13 But he is unchangeable, ⁴  and who can change ⁵  him?

Whatever he ⁶  has desired, he does.

Psalms 33:10

33:10 The Lord frustrates ⁷  the decisions of the nations;

he nullifies the plans ⁸  of the peoples.

Psalms 92:5

92:5 How great are your works, O Lord!

Your plans are very intricate! ⁹ 

Proverbs 19:21

19:21 There are many plans ¹⁰  in a person’s mind, ¹¹ 

but it ¹²  is the counsel ¹³  of the Lord which will stand.

Proverbs 21:30

21:30 There is no wisdom and there is no understanding,

and there is no counsel against ¹⁴  the Lord. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 23:20

23:20 The anger of the Lord will not turn back

until he has fully carried out his intended purposes. ¹⁶ 

In days to come ¹⁷ 

you people will come to understand this clearly. ¹⁸ 

Jeremiah 29:11

29:11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ¹⁹  ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you ²⁰  a future filled with hope. ²¹ 

Lamentations 3:37

מ (Mem)

3:37 Whose command was ever fulfilled ²² 

unless the Lord ²³  decreed it?

Matthew 11:25

Jesus’ Invitation

11:25 At that time Jesus said, ²⁴  “I praise ²⁵  you, Father, Lord ²⁶  of heaven and earth, because ²⁷  you have hidden these things from the wise ²⁸  and intelligent, and revealed them to little children.

Acts 4:28

4:28 to do as much as your power ²⁹  and your plan ³⁰  had decided beforehand ³¹  would happen.

Ephesians 1:9

1:9 He did this when he revealed ³²  to us the secret ³³  of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth ³⁴  in Christ, ³⁵ 

[46:10]  ¹ tn Or “from long ago”; KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV “from ancient times.”

[46:11]  ² tn Or, more generally, “a bird of prey” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV; see 18:6).

[46:11]  ³ tn Heb “spoken”; KJV “I have spoken it.”

[23:13]  ⁴ tc The MT has “But he [is] in one.” Many add the word “mind” to capture the point that God is resolute and unchanging. Some commentators find this too difficult, and so change the text from בְאֶחָד (bÿ’ekhad, here “unchangeable”) to בָחָר (bakhar, “he has chosen”). The wording in the text is idiomatic and should be retained. R. Gordis (Job, 262) translates it “he is one, i.e., unchangeable, fixed, determined.” The preposition בּ (bet) is a bet essentiae – “and he [is] as one,” or “he is one” (see GKC 379 §119.i).

[23:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “cause him to return.”

[23:13]  ⁶ tn Or “his soul.”

[33:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “breaks” or “destroys.” The Hebrew perfect verbal forms here and in the next line generalize about the Lord’s activity.

[33:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “thoughts.”

[92:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “very deep [are] your thoughts.” God’s “thoughts” refer here to his moral design of the world, as outlined in vv. 6-15.

[19:21]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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”).

[21:30]  ¹⁴ tn The form לְנֶגֶד (lÿneged) means “against; over against; in opposition to.” The line indicates they cannot in reality be in opposition, for human wisdom is nothing in comparison to the wisdom of God (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 232).

[21:30]  ¹⁵ sn The verse uses a single sentence to state that all wisdom, understanding, and advice must be in conformity to the will of God to be successful. It states it negatively – these things cannot be in defiance of God (e.g., Job 5:12-13; Isa 40:13-14).

[23:20]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “until he has done and until he has carried out the purposes of his heart.”

[23:20]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “in the latter days.” However, as BDB 31 s.v. אַחֲרִית b suggests, the meaning of this idiom must be determined from the context. Sometimes it has remote, even eschatological, reference and other times it has more immediate reference as it does here and in Jer 30:23 where it refers to the coming days of Babylonian conquest and exile.

[23:20]  ¹⁸ tn The translation is intended to reflect a Hebrew construction where a noun functions as the object of a verb from the same root word (the Hebrew cognate accusative).

[29:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[29:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “I know the plans that I am planning for you, oracle of the Lord, plans of well-being and not for harm to give to you….”

[29:11]  ²¹ tn Or “the future you hope for”; Heb “a future and a hope.” This is a good example of hendiadys where two formally coordinated nouns (adjectives, verbs) convey a single idea where one of the terms functions as a qualifier of the other. For this figure see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 658-72. This example is discussed on p. 661.

[3:37]  ²² tn Heb “Who is this, he spoke and it came to pass?” The general sense is to ask whose commands are fulfilled. The phrase “he spoke and it came to pass” is taken as an allusion to the creation account (see Gen 1:3).

[3:37]  ²³ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”). See the tc note at 1:14.

[11:25]  ²⁴ tn Grk “At that time, answering, Jesus said.” This construction is somewhat redundant in English and has been simplified in the translation.

[11:25]  ²⁵ tn Or “thank.”

[11:25]  ²⁶ sn The title Lord is an important name for God, showing his sovereignty, but it is interesting that it comes next to a reference to the Father, a term indicative of God’s care. The two concepts are often related in the NT; see Eph 1:3-6.

[11:25]  ²⁷ tn Or “that.”

[11:25]  ²⁸ sn See 1 Cor 1:26-31.

[4:28]  ²⁹ tn Grk “hand,” here a metaphor for God’s strength or power or authority.

[4:28]  ³⁰ tn Or “purpose,” “will.”

[4:28]  ³¹ tn Or “had predestined.” Since the term “predestine” is something of a technical theological term, not in wide usage in contemporary English, the translation “decide beforehand” was used instead (see L&N 30.84). God’s direction remains as the major theme.

[1:9]  ³² tn Or “He did this by revealing”; Grk “making known, revealing.” Verse 9 begins with a participle dependent on “lavished” in v. 8; the adverbial participle could be understood as temporal (“when he revealed”), which would be contemporaneous to the action of the finite verb “lavished,” or as means (“by revealing”). The participle has been translated here with the temporal nuance to allow for means to also be a possible interpretation. If the translation focused instead upon means, the temporal nuance would be lost as the time frame for the action of the participle would become indistinct.

[1:9]  ³³ tn Or “mystery.” In the NT μυστήριον (musthrion) refers to a divine secret previously undisclosed.

[1:9]  ³⁴ tn Or “purposed,” “publicly displayed.” Cf. Rom 3:25.

[1:9]  ³⁵ tn Grk “in him”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for the sake of clarity.