Proverbs 21:1
The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.
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Study Note
The observation 'the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will' applies irrigation imagery — water channels redirected by the farmer's hand — to the most significant form of human authority, royal decision-making. The verse stands at the beginning of a cluster of royal proverbs (21:1-2) that consistently subordinate royal power to divine scrutiny, a wisdom-tradition counterweight to royal ideology's claims of autonomous divine mandate. The hydraulic metaphor implies not that the king is coerced but that his free decisions are mysteriously directed by a higher sovereignty — a model of concursive divine action in human affairs. Ezra 1:1 ('the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus') and Isaiah 45:1-4 ('I have called thee by thy name... though thou hast not known me') provide narrative examples of this principle operating in history.
Bản dịch khác
The king’s heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses: He turneth it whithersoever he will.
Rivulets of waters <FI>is<Fi> the heart of a king in the hand of Jehovah, Wherever He pleaseth He inclineth it.
The king's heart in the hands of the Lord is like the water streams, and by him it is turned in any direction at his pleasure.
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Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven.
Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.
The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.
He turned their heart to hate his people, to deal subtilly with his servants.
He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives.
The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.