Proverbs 19:21

19:21 There are many plans ¹  in a person’s mind, ² 

but it ³  is the counsel ⁴  of the Lord which will stand.

Lamentations 3:37

מ (Mem)

3:37 Whose command was ever fulfilled ⁵ 

unless the Lord ⁶  decreed it?

James 4:13-15

4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that town ⁷  and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” 4:14 You ⁸  do not know about tomorrow. What is your life like? ⁹  For you are a puff of smoke ¹⁰  that appears for a short time and then vanishes. 4:15 You ought to say instead, ¹¹  “If the Lord is willing, then we will live and do this or that.”

[19:21]  ¹ 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]  ² 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]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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”).

[3:37]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”). See the tc note at 1:14.

[4:13]  ⁷ tn Or “city.”

[4:14]  ⁸ tn Grk “who” (continuing the description of the people of v. 13). Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[4:14]  ⁹ tn Or “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”

[4:14]  ¹⁰ tn Or “a vapor.” The Greek word ἀτμίς (atmis) denotes a swirl of smoke arising from a fire (cf. Gen 19:28; Lev 16:13; Joel 2:30 [Acts 2:19]; Ezek 8:11).

[4:15]  ¹¹ tn Grk “instead of your saying.”