Proverbs 20:24 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Man's goings, all men's purposes and actions, are of the Lord; are ordered and overruled by God's wise and powerful providence to accomplish his own counsel and good pleasure, and not what men list or intend. His own way; either,

1. What course he ought to take; which he cannot know without God's direction and assistance: compare Proverbs 16:9 Jeremiah 10:23. Or,

2. What is the issue of his designs will be, whether they shall succeed or be disappointed; the way being taken for the end or event to which it leads, as it is in many other places. The scope of the proverb is to show that all the events of human life are neither ordered nor foreseen by man s, but only by God's providence, and therefore men should only mind the doing of their duty, and then quietly depend upon God for a good issue to their endeavours.

Proverbs 20:24

24 Man's goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?