Decision
Scripture treats decision as the resolute either-or moment: a chooser stands before life and death, between Yahweh and another god, between the people of God and the pleasures of sin, and the question is whether the heart will be whole or divided. The UPDV's choosing-and-serving vocabulary draws the line repeatedly — choose this day, choose life, set your face, stick to Yahweh, do not turn aside — and pairs it with the warning that a divided heart is no decision at all.
Choose This Day
Decision begins as a deliberate selection between named alternatives. Joshua frames the moment as a one-day choice with the speaker's own household already pledged: "And if it seems evil to you⁺ to serve Yahweh, choose you⁺ this day whom you⁺ will serve; whether the gods which your⁺ fathers served who were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you⁺ dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh" (Joshua 24:15). Moses sets the stakes higher still — heaven and earth as witnesses, life and death as the options — and turns the witness-summons into an imperative: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed" (Deuteronomy 30:19). Micah pictures the same choice projected forward in time as perpetual allegiance: "For all the peoples walk every one in the name of his god; and we will walk in the name of Yahweh our God forever and ever" (Micah 4:5).
The Psalter and Proverbs carry the pattern as confessional self-description. The DALET psalmist names the path he has selected — "I have chosen the way of faithfulness: Your ordinances I have set [before me]" (Psalm 119:30) — pairing the chosen path with the ordinances kept in the line of sight. Wisdom's reverse verdict on those who refused the choice is the same vocabulary inverted: "For they hated knowledge, And did not choose the fear of Yahweh" (Proverbs 1:29). And when Yahweh opens an unrestricted Ask-what-I-will-give-you grant to a young king, Solomon selects judging-discernment over self-gain: "Give your slave therefore an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil" (1 Kings 3:9).
The Divided Heart
The opposite of decision is not refusal but doubleness — feared Yahweh and served their own gods, swore to Yahweh and swore by Milcom. Elijah names the posture and demands its end: "How long do you⁺ go limping between the two sides? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word" (1 Kings 18:21). Hosea diagnoses the same condition and pronounces its verdict: "Their heart is divided; now they will be found guilty" (Hosea 10:2). The historian's record of the resettled north makes the doubleness audit-trail explicit: "They feared Yahweh, and served their own gods" (2 Kings 17:33); "So these nations feared Yahweh, and served their graven images; their sons likewise, and the sons of their sons, as did their fathers, so they do to this day" (2 Kings 17:41). Zephaniah binds Baal-remnant, host-of-heaven worship, and the Yahweh-and-Milcom oath into a single judgment-class about to be cut off (Zephaniah 1:4-5).
Jesus sharpens the household economics. "No household slave can serve as a slave to two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will hold to one, and despise the other. You⁺ can't serve as a slave to God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). James names the divided man and prescribes the cure: "a man who is double-minded, unstable in all his ways" (James 1:8); "Cleanse your⁺ hands, you⁺ sinners; and purify your⁺ hearts, you⁺ double-minded" (James 4:8). The chronicler treats single-heartedness as a battle-readiness trait: Zebulun's fifty thousand "could order [the battle array, and were] not of double heart" (1 Chronicles 12:33). Sirach's wisdom version is direct: "Woe to fearful hearts and faint hands, And to the sinner who goes two ways" (Sirach 2:12); "Do not be scattered in every wind, And do not walk in every path" (Sirach 5:9).
Hand to the Plow
Once the choice is made, decision becomes a posture: face set, eyes forward, hand on the plow, no backward look. The Servant-figure in Isaiah states the posture as a help-grounded resolve: "the Sovereign Yahweh will help me; therefore I have not been confounded: therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I will not be put to shame" (Isaiah 50:7). Luke applies the same idiom to Jesus' Jerusalem-trajectory: "when the days were well-near come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51). Jesus then makes the no-backward-look principle binding on his followers: "No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). Paul confesses the same forward-only stance: "forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before" (Philippians 3:13).
The wisdom register supplies the walking-rule. Joshua receives it on the threshold of the land — "Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my slave commanded you: don't turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go" (Joshua 1:7) — and Proverbs reissues it for the wise son: "Let your eyes look right on, And let your eyelids look straight before you. Make level the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established. Don't turn to the right hand nor to the left: Remove your foot from evil" (Proverbs 4:25-27). Sirach's parallel is twin-clause: "Direct your heart aright, and continue steadfast, And do not hurry in time of calamity. Stick to him, and don't be far, That you may be increased in your latter end" (Sirach 2:2-3).
Resolute Examples
The narrative record collects figures whose decision is exhibited in a refusal at the moment of pressure. Ruth refuses Moab-return with a four-fold identification clause: "Don't entreat me to leave you, and to return from following after you, for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16). Mary chooses the one needful thing: "Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:42). Moses' chooses against pleasure-of-sin in the Hebrews catalogue: "choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season" (Hebrews 11:25).
The kings-and-prophets material adds three figures whose decision is exhibited as a stick-to-Yahweh refusal of compromise. The unnamed man of God refuses a king's hospitality outright: "If you will give me half your house, I will not go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place" (1 Kings 13:8). Hezekiah's epitaph names the same posture: "For he stuck to Yahweh; he did not depart from following him, but kept his commandments" (2 Kings 18:6). Daniel's friends supply the New-Testament-shape if-not refusal: "But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up" (Daniel 3:18). Job names the steady-foot pattern in confession: "My foot has held fast to his steps; His way I have kept, and did not turn aside" (Job 23:11).
Choosing Evil
Decision can run the other way, and Scripture grades evil-choice on the same vocabulary. Wisdom's verdict on the simple is a doubled rejection: "they hated knowledge, And did not choose the fear of Yahweh" (Proverbs 1:29). Isaiah's prophet plants the same verdict against the people who would not answer when called: "you⁺ did that which was evil in my eyes, and chose that in which I did not delight" (Isaiah 65:12). And against a cult of equated abominations: "Yes, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their detestable things" (Isaiah 66:3). The choosing-soul has fastened on the wrong objects, and the cultic acts that follow are graded as the outworking of the prior choice.
Life and Death Set Before You
Sirach gives decision a wisdom-creation framing: the man was committed at his beginning to a deliberative faculty whose grip on him is the very locus of moral-choice, and the choice-array is set out openly in front of him. "It was he who from the beginning created man; And gave him into the hand of his imagination. ... If it pleases you, you will keep the commandments; And to do his will is understanding. Fire and water are poured out before you; In that which pleases you, put forth your hand. Life and death are before man; That which pleases him will be given to him" (Sirach 15:14-17). Decision is exhibited here as the man's hand-extension toward the option of his pleasure, with the verdict that what one prefers between the ultimate-pair is what one actually receives.