counsel: the considered advice, plan, or purpose that comes out of thinking a matter through.
At its heart this is one idea worked out in several directions: the fruit of careful deliberation. It can be the advice one person gives another, the plan or scheme a person forms and sets out to carry through, the settled purpose of God himself, or, more abstractly, the very ability to think wisely and give good direction.
What holds these together is that the word never names idle talk or a stray thought. It is deliberate. When people give it to each other it is advice meant to be acted on, weighed as good or bad, taken or refused. When God has it, it is his fixed purpose, the plan that stands when every human scheme collapses.
That tension between human counsel and God's counsel is a thread the Bible pulls on again and again, especially in the prophets and the wisdom books. People plot and advise, kings take sides between rival counselors, nations lay their schemes; and over all of it stands the one counsel that actually comes to pass.