Psalms 32:8

The three verbs get progressively more personal, and the last one is the surprise.

I will instruct you — the general word, teaching content. I will teach you in the way which you shall go — narrower, a specific route for a specific person. And then: I will counsel you with my eye on you.

That last image is the one to keep. Not with my eye on the road, or on the destination. On you. It is the picture of someone giving directions while watching the person receiving them — adjusting to the face, noticing when it stops making sense, slowing down where the instruction is hard.

The contrast comes in the very next verse, and it is deliberately unflattering. Don't be like the horse, or like the mule, which have no understanding, who are controlled by bit and bridle. There are two ways to be directed. One involves your understanding. The other involves hardware, applied to the mouth, by someone who has given up on persuasion.

God's preference is stated by the order: counsel first, tackle second. The eye is offered before the bridle.

And all of this arrives in a psalm about confession — after David has described what it was like to keep silent, and how his bones wasted away. Guidance is not offered here as a reward for being sorted out. It is what comes after the admission.