Proverbs 19:21
There are many thoughts in the heart of a man: but the will of the Lord shall stand firm.
Open Proverbs 19:21 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Multæ cogitationes in corde viri ; voluntas autem Domini permanebit.
- Septuagint (Swete) shown from Proverbs 19:18
- πολλοὶ λογισμοὶ ἐν καρδίᾳ ἀνδρός, ἡ δὲ βουλὴ τοῦ κυρίου εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα μένει.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- רַבּ֣וֹת מַחֲשָׁב֣וֹת בְּלֶב אִ֑ישׁ וַעֲצַ֥ת יְ֝הוָ֗ה הִ֣יא תָקֽוּם
Haydock's commentary
Firm. Ignorance and weakness cause men to change.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Letter CIV
11. You have here a frank avowal of the thoughts and desires of my heart in this matter. As to what lies concealed in the counsels of God, I confess it is unknown to me; I am but a man; but whatever it be, His counsel stands most sure, and incomparably excels in equity and in wisdom all that can be conceived by the minds of men. With truth is it said in our books, “There are many devices in a man’s heart; but the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” Wherefore, as to what time may bring forth, as to what may arise to simplify or complicate our procedure, in short, as to what desire may suddenly be awakened by the fear of losing or the hope of retaining present possessions; whether God shall show Himself so displeased by what they have done that they shall be punished with the more weighty and severe sentence of a disastrous impunity, or shall appoint that they shall be compassionately …
St Augustine On the Holy Trinity, Against Eunomius, Saying that the Son of God is the Son, Not of His Nature, But of His Will. Epilogue to What Has Been Said Already
38. Wherefore the logic of Eunomius, from whom the Eunomian heretics sprang, is ridiculous. For when he could not understand, and would not believe, that the only-begotten Word of God, by which all things were made is the Son of God by nature, i.e. born of the substance of the Father, he alleged that He was not the Son of His own nature or substance or essence, but the Son of the will of God; so as to mean to assert that the will by which he begot the Son was something accidental [and optional] to God, to wit, in that way that we ourselves sometimes will something which before we did not will, as though it was not for these very things that our nature is perceived to be changeable, a thing which far be it from us to believe of God. …
St Augustine On the Catechising of the Uninstructed, Of the Remedy Against the Fifth and Sixth Sources of Weariness
20. If, again, your spirit has been broken by the necessity of giving up some other employment, on which, as the more requisite, you were now bent; and if the sadness caused by that constraint makes you catechise in no pleasant mood, you ought to ponder the fact that, excepting that we know it to be our duty, in all our dealings with men, to act in a merciful manner, and in the exercise of the sincerest charity, with this one exception, I say, it is quite uncertain to us what is the more profitable thing for us to do, and what the more opportune thing for us either to pass by for a time or altogether to omit. …
St Jerome Against the Pelagians, Book I
xix. 21 . Many devices in a man’s heart.