Two Halves of a Single Verse
Few verses in all of Scripture set the relation of God and man so plainly, and in so few words, as the ninth verse of the sixteenth chapter of Proverbs. It is built, like so much of Hebrew wisdom, upon a balance — two clauses set against each other, the second answering and overruling the first. “A man’s heart deviseth his way” — there is the part of man. “But the LORD directeth his steps” — there is the part of God. The little word “but” is the hinge on which the whole verse turns, and upon it hangs one of the deepest and most practical truths a believer can learn.
The old saying has it, “Man proposes, but God disposes,” and that proverb of men is only an echo of this proverb of God. Here is the whole matter in miniature: the planning is ours; the performing is His. We devise; He directs. And the order is not accidental. Man’s devising comes first in the verse, as it comes first in our experience — we lay our schemes, we chart our course — but God’s directing comes last, as it comes last in the event, having the final word over all we have purposed.
“A Man’s Heart Deviseth His Way”
Let us not pass too quickly over the first clause, for it is true and not to be despised. Man does devise his way. God has made us thinking, planning, willing creatures, and He does not treat us as stones or machines. The word rendered “deviseth” speaks of reckoning, of thinking out, of planning with purpose. It is no sin to plan; Scripture commends the prudent man who foresees the evil and hides himself, and rebukes the sluggard who will not consider his ways. The farmer plans his planting, the builder counts the cost before he builds, the wise man orders his affairs. To devise one’s way is part of bearing the image of a God who Himself works all things after the counsel of His own will.
So this verse does not teach a lazy fatalism that folds its hands and says, “What will be, will be, so why should I plan at all?” That is not faith but folly, and the Scriptures never countenance it. The believer plans, and plans diligently. But — and here is the turn — he plans as a creature, not as a sovereign; he devises knowing that his devising is not the last word.
“But the LORD Directeth His Steps”
Now comes the overruling clause. A man may map out the whole road in his heart, but it is the LORD who governs each actual footfall along it. There is a beautiful precision in the language: man deviseth his way — the broad plan, the general course — but the LORD directeth his steps — the particular, concrete, one-after-another movements by which the way is actually walked. A man may settle in his heart where he intends to go; God determines whether and how he gets there, and what he meets along the road. The plan is proposed in the study; the steps are ordered by heaven.
This same truth runs like a golden thread through the whole chapter, and through all the Proverbs. Three verses earlier: “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:1). Two verses later the principle is applied to commerce and counsel. And again: “There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand” (Proverbs 19:21). And once more, lest we think our steps are our own to command: “Man’s goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?” (Proverbs 20:24). The testimony is uniform. We devise; He directs. The counsel that finally stands is never ours but His.
Planning Without Pride: The Lesson of James
James the Apostle takes up this very theme and presses it upon the conscience. He rebukes not the making of plans, but the making of plans as though God were not in them:
The sin James condemns is not planning but presumption — the arrogance of charting a year of business as if the breath in our lungs and the beating of our hearts were ours to guarantee. The corrective is not to stop planning but to plan humbly, holding every purpose under the open hand of God: “If the Lord will.” This is Proverbs 16:9 turned into a posture of the heart. We devise our way, and then we add, beneath our breath and in our souls, “but the LORD directeth my steps, and so, if He wills.”
Does This Destroy Man’s Responsibility?
Some object that if God directs every step, then man’s planning is a sham and his responsibility a fiction. But the verse itself forbids that conclusion, for it affirms both truths in a single breath without the least embarrassment. Man really does devise; the devising is genuinely his, and he is accountable for it. God really does direct; the directing is sovereignly His, and it cannot be thwarted. Scripture never asks us to surrender one of these truths to hold the other. The same Bible that says “the LORD directeth his steps” also says “commit thy works unto the LORD” (Proverbs 16:3) — commanding the very planning whose outcome it ascribes to God.
We see the two woven together everywhere in the Word. Joseph’s brothers devised evil and were truly guilty of it; yet Joseph could say, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). The same act was man’s wicked devising and God’s good directing. Men freely laid their plans against the Lord Jesus; yet they did only “whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:28). How these two run together — man’s real responsibility and God’s total sovereignty — is a mystery our small minds cannot fully fathom; but that they do run together, Scripture leaves in no doubt. We are not asked to explain it, but to believe it and to bow.
The Comfort Hidden in This Verse
Far from being a hard or fearful doctrine, this is among the most comforting truths the weary heart can hold. For consider what it means that the LORD directs our steps. It means that our lives are not at the mercy of blind chance, nor finally in the grip of our own poor judgment, nor at the disposal of scheming men. The best-laid plans of the mightiest enemy cannot carry a single step further than God permits. And our own plans, so often foolish and shortsighted, are overruled by a wisdom and love infinitely greater than ours. How many times has the believer looked back and thanked God that the door he pushed so hard against was held shut by a gracious hand — that the way he devised was not the way his steps were directed.
The Christian may therefore plan in peace and walk in trust. He makes his plans honestly and prayerfully, then lays them on the altar and says, “Thy will be done.” If God directs his steps another way, he does not fret as one robbed, but rests as one led. “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” (Psalm 37:23) — and a step ordered by the LORD, however unexpected, is always a step in the right direction.
Let us then devise our way as wise and diligent stewards, but hold it loosely, with open hands and a bowed heart, knowing that the One who directs our steps is too wise to err and too good to be unkind. We propose; He disposes — and blessed is the man who has learned to be glad that it is so.