This saying is an observation about human nature, namely that it is not easy to discover a person’s thoughts or a person’s real intentions, but that someone who has understanding is able to do so.

“The purpose in a man’s mind is like deep water”: In this simile a person’s thoughts or intentions are compared to water that is deep (compare the same simile used of a person’s words in 18.4). In the light of the verb “draw out” in the next line Good News Translation takes this to be a picture of a well in which the water is a long way down. In any case the point of comparison is that both deep water and a person’s thoughts are difficult to get hold of. While Contemporary English Version translates the term “purpose” as “someone’s thoughts” and Good News Translation is similar, the sense is more likely to be the intentions, plans, or motives of people, as in 19.21, and translators should try to find equivalents for this sense in their languages. Translations like New Revised Standard Version and New International Version in English retain the rendering “purposes.”

“But a man of understanding will draw it out”: “A man of understanding”, as in 11.12, is a person who has insight (Good News Translation) or intelligence (New Revised Standard Version). Revised English Bible has “a discerning person.” To “draw out” someone’s thoughts is to bring them to light or to “discover them” (Contemporary English Version). The sense of the future “will draw it out” is that the intelligent person is able to understand; Good News Translation has “someone with insight can. . ..”

A model translation for this whole verse is: “The plans of a person lie deep in his heart like something lying at the bottom of deep water, but a person of understanding can draw it from there.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .