Every man thinks his way is right, because it feels right and seems right. But God warns that such thoughts lead to death. Most men love their opinions too much to change, even if the Bible condemns their ideas and thoughts as sinful and self-destructive. There is only one criterion for truth and wisdom, and that is the will of God revealed in the Bible. Reader, you have strong opinions of how life should be lived and things done. Your thoughts that seem so right come from parents, habits, culture, teachers, friends, religion, various media, experiences, and most of all, your deceitful heart and wicked imagination (Gen 6:5; Jer 17:9). But these sources, far apart from divine truth, all lead to your death. The first clause describes one way of one man. This is a man’s personal opinion about a particular matter. He is confident his opinion is good and right, because he came up with the idea and has enormous bias to justify himself and defend his thinking. He has thought about the issue, and he is comfortable and quite content with his thinking on the matter. The second clause describes the end, or result, of one way of one man to be the plural ways of death. There are many ways men can die, and each man’s own arrogant thinking is able to get him there easily and surely. When the foolish ideas of individual men are combined, they result in plural ways of death. Learn to hate your thoughts (Ps 119:113). Because every man is very vulnerable to arrogant thinking and errors, Solomon repeated this proverb to emphasize the value of its lesson (Pr 14:12; Phil 3:1). He also included several proverbs with different wording for a similar lesson (Pr 12:15; 16:2; 21:2; 28:26). He knew you would foolishly think your ideas are noble and wise. Humble yourself now. A wise man learns not to trust his own thinking and to seek God’s will on every matter (Pr 3:5-6). He then avoids the world’s seductive ways that lead to death (Pr 12:26; Ps 1:1-6). He humbly confesses his ignorance, prays for God to search his heart and thoughts, and judges every opinion by clear Bible doctrine (Pr 30:2-3; Ps 139:23-24; 119:128). Self-deceit is blinding and damning. It leads you to destruction, but you cannot detect you have lied to yourself, because you are in love with your thoughts (Pr 18:2; 26:12,16). No one can give reasons to persuade you, because their ideas are inferior to yours. And once you commit yourself to a course of action, you are too proud to admit any error (Ps 36:2). Popular thinking on matters of truth and wisdom is always wrong. The majority is in love with themselves and each other, but God considers their most noble thoughts to be an abomination (Luke 16:15). He plainly declared that most men take the wide gate and broad way to destruction; only a few take the strait gate and narrow way to life (Matt 7:13-14). God knows the thoughts of men are vanity – worthless trash (Ps 94:11), and you should think the same of them – whether your own or another man’s (Ps 119:113). King Saul of Israel had an idea, and it seemed right. Instead of slaughtering and wasting all the good animals of the Amalekites, he would allow the people to keep them for an offering to Jehovah. But Jehovah had already stated they were to be slaughtered. So Samuel the prophet condemned his thinking as witchcraft and idolatry (I Sam 15:1-35). Saul of Tarsus thought with himself to do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 26:9). Notice that he thought with himself, which is the sin of this proverb, because he had no internal check on false thoughts. You need an outside opinion that is perfectly right to correct your thinking, and God’s will in the Bible is perfect (Ps 119:128; Is 8:20).