Proverbs 30
Butler1. THE words of Agur the son of Jakeh; the oracle.
The man saith unto Ithiel, unto Ithiel and Ucal :
2. Surely I am more brutish than any man, And have not the understanding of a man :
3. And I have not learned wisdom, Neither have I the knowledge of the Holy One.
4. Who hath ascended up into heaven, and descended ?
Who hath gathered the wind in his fists ? Who hath bound the waters in his garment ? Who hath established all the ends of the earth ?
What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou knowest ?
5. Every word of God is tried : He is a shield unto them that trust in him.
6. Add thou not unto his words, Lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.
7. Two things have I asked of thee ; Deny me them not before I die :
8. Remove far from me vanity and lies : Give me neither poverty nor riches ; Feed me with the food that is needful for me :
9. Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD ? Or lest I be poor, and steal, And use profanely the name of my God.
10. Slander not a servant unto his master, Lest he curse thee, and thou be held guilty.
11. There is a generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother.
12. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, And yet are not washed from their filthiness.
13. There is a generation, Oh how lofty are their eyes ! And their eyelids are lifted up.
14. There is a generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives. To devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.
15. The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give.
There are three things that are never satis- fied, Yea, four that say not, Enough :
16. The grave ; and the barren womb ; The earth that is not satisfied with water ; And the fire that saith not, Enough.
17. The eye that mocketh at his father, And despiseth to obey his mother, The ravens of the valley shall pick it out, And the young eagles shall eat it.
18. There be three things which are too wonder- ful for me, Yea, four which I know not :
19. The way of an eagle in the air ; The way of a serpent upon a rock ; The way of a ship in the midst of the sea ; And the way of a man with a maid.
20. So is the way of an adulterous woman ; She eateth, and wipeth her mouth, And saith, I have done no wickedness.
21. For three things the earth doth tremble, And for four, which it cannot bear :
22. For a servant when he is king ; And a fool when he is filled with meat ;
23. For an odious woman when she is married ; And an handmaid that is heir to her mis- tress.
24. There be four things which are little upon the earth, But they are exceeding wise :
25. The ants are a people not strong, Yet they provide their meat in the summer ;
26. The conies are but a feeble folk, Yet make they their houses in the rocks ;
27. The locusts have no king, Yet go they forth all of them by bands ;
28. The lizard taketh hold with her hands, Yet is she in king’s palaces.
29. There be three things which are stately in their march, Yea, four which are stately in going :
30. The lion, which is mightiest among beasts, And turneth not away for any ;
31. The greyhound ; the he-goat also ;
And the king, against whom there is no rising up.
32. If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself,
Or if thou hast thought evil,
THIS chapter and the next are not ascribed to Solomon; but this to Agur and the next to Lemuel and his mother. In this chapter the style and general manner are peculiar and unique, quite unlike anything we have from the pen of Solomon. The writer brings forward his points in groups. Two things he prays for (vs. 7-9); a series of four “generations” have their very distinctive qualities (vs. 11-14); four things are insatiable (vs. 15, 16); three, yea four things are very wonderful and not easily traced out (vs. 18, 19); another group of three or four bring upon society intolerable disquiet (vs. 21-23); another group of four things are each small but very wise (vs. 24-28); a closing group of three or four are stately in their movements (vs. 29-31). Some proverbs disconnected and apparently independent of these groups are interspersed occasionally between them. In regard to the author of this chapter; his time; his country—in general, his history, nothing is certainly known. H. C.
1. Instead of the “proverbs,” or simply “words of the wise,” we have here and in 31:1 the word “oracle” or “prophecy.” The Hebrew word thus rendered (massa) literally means “burden,” and as such is used either literally of the holy things which were to be borne by the sons of Korah, or figuratively for the weight of care and responsibility. In Isaiah and Jeremiah it appears in a sense more nearly approaching to that of “prophecy,” as the title of messages which the prophets were commissioned to deliver, and probably implied that the message was in the figurative sense, a “burden” which the prophet had to bear, until he had freed himself from its weight by delivering the message. E. H. P.
4. The questions contemplate God as seen in the glory and majesty of His works of creation. Most appropriately does frail, feeble man look forth upon the vastness of these works and ask, Who has wrought them? What can I learn of His name, i.e., of His nature and of the great depths of His being, His wisdom and His power? H. C.
5,6. Out of this consciousness of the impotence of all man’s efforts after the knowledge of God rises the sense of the preciousness of every living word that God has Himself re-
Lay thine hand upon thy mouth.
33. For the churning of milk bringeth forth butter,
And the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood:
So the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.
vealed, whether through “the law and the prophets” or through “wise men and scribes.” The preciousness of truth thus revealed, wherever it is bestowed, should restrain men from mingling with it their own imaginations and traditions. E. H. P.
If this great God, the Maker of all things, so manifestly wise and good, shall deign to speak to mortals, we may be very sure that every word He utters will be pure. See that thou add nothing to His words lest He reprove thee and convict thee of representing Him falsely. H. C. —Every word of God is sure, and therefore we must trust to it and venture our souls upon it. God in His Word, God in His promise, is a shield, a sure protection, to all them that put themselves under His protection and put their trust in Him. The Word of God, applied by faith, will make us easy in the midst of the greatest dangers. H.
7-9. Agur prays for two things: First, put vanity and lies far from my heart; let my spirit never be polluted, even in the sight of God, with falsehood; and, second, of earthly good let me have a simple competence—no more, no less. Not more, lest becoming sated and over-fed, I lose the sense of my dependence upon God, and say in guilty pride, Who is the Lord? And what do I need from Him? And not less, lest becoming impoverished, I should be tempted to steal, and so should dishonor the name of God; literally, “take it up roughly,” irreverently. H. C.—The wise man’s prayer is not merely like that of an epicurean asking for a quiet life, between the two extremes of wealth and poverty, but first and chiefly, “truth in the inward parts,” the removal of all forms of falsehood, hollowness, hypocrisy. The evil of the opposite extremes of social life is that in different ways they lead men to a false standard of duty, and so to that forgetfulness of God which passes into an absolute denial. Food convenient for me; literally, “give me for food the bread of my appointed portion.” The prayer of the wise man foreshadows that which we have been taught by the Divine Wisdom, and in which we pray “Give us, day by day, our daily bread.” E. H. P.
8. Remove from me vanity. Vanity is in the mind, not in the objects of display.
The gayest dress is not a vanity, though the wearer may be full of it. The flowers are not vain, but fling their odors on the air and spread out their simple charms for admiration; but people vain of the clothing of sheep and ornaments of birds pique each other with their silly envies and make themselves wretched over small affronts. We should pray like Agur, to have all vanities and lies put far away from us. Bennett.
Give me neither poverty nor riches. We must not consider Agur as praying absolutely against riches, or absolutely against poverty; for poverty and riches are of themselves things indifferent, and the blessing of God may go with them both; but it is a prayer of choice, or a comparative prayer, as if he had said, Give me, O God, if it be Thy will the middle between both, and feed me with food convenient for me. For though all the three conditions be so far indifferent that a man may be good, and ought to be contented or resigned in any of them; yet if it were matter of choice, the middle is the easiest and most desirable. Jortin.—All things considered, he that can cut evenest between want and excess is in the safest, easiest, happiest estate—a truth which, if it were duly entertained, would quit men’s hearts of a world of vexation which now they do willingly draw upon themselves; for he that resolves to be rich and great, as he must needs fall into many snares of sin, so into manifold distractions of cares. In all experience he that sets too high a pitch to his desires lives upon the rack; neither can be loosed till he remit of his great thoughts, and resolve to clip his wings and train and take up with the present. Bishop H.
There is no virtue in poverty. It is a dispensation of God’s providence; it is not a grace of God’s Spirit. Viewed simply in itself, it is neither moral nor immoral. Like pain, it is just an affliction, and, like other afflictions, it depends on the use that is made of it; it depends on the man’s conduct under it whether it proves in the end a mere calamity or a blessing in disguise. Nor is it a sin to be rich. Like health and mental power, wealth is the gift of God; and, like bodily vigor or intellectual energy, wealth may be made a great blessing. It may not only extend the sphere of the owner’s enjoyment, but wisely administered it may vastly swell the sum of human happiness. One man of great substance may do more than a hundred others to encourage industry, to employ labor, to draw forth talent, to advance the arts, to alleviate misery, to extend the Gospel
—just as a man of great fortune, but great wickedness, may do more mischief than many bad men of scanty means. Viewed in itself, and supposing it to be fairly come by, wealth is neither a virtue nor a vice; it is simply a talent, a power, a faculty—like health and genius a good gift of God, but like health and genius capable of being so perverted as to prove its owner’s curse. Hamilton.
As there are some graces of a Christian which come not to trial till we are in want, so there are other graces which come not to trial till we have abundance. Want trieth our patience and our dependence upon God, and abundance trieth our temperance, our humility, our liberality; yea, and our dependence upon and faith in God for the sanctifying blessing and making comfortable to us, what we have. Caryl.—Poverty bravely wrestled with and nobly overcome may be the very making of you. Too much money has undone many a youth; too little has been the spur that has urged on many another to put forth all his strength, and so has developed and increased that strength. When you are getting comfortable and easy, therefore, suspect yourselves, and watch lest your activity disappear and self-sacrifice drop entirely out of your life. The mill-wheel stands still when there is too much water as well as when there is too little, and Agur’s prayer is always safe. W. M. T.
He is rich, not that possesses much, but that covets no more; and he is poor, not that enjoys little, but that wants too much. The contented mind wants nothing which it hath not; the covetous mind wants not only what it hath not, but likewise what it hath. Quarles.
9. Use profanely the name of my God.** Common swearing, if it have any meaning at all, argues in man a perpetual distrust of his own reputation, and is an acknowledgment that he thinks his bare word not to be worthy of credit. Tillotson.—Profanity is a vice which men have invented for themselves without prospect of pleasure or profit, and to which there is no imaginable temptation in nature. If it be an accomplishment, it is such an one as the meanest person may make himself master of; requiring neither rank nor fortune, neither genius nor learning. Anon.—The basest and meanest of mankind swear with as much tact and skill as the most refined; and he that wishes to degrade himself to the very lowest level of pollution and shame should learn to be a common swearer. Any man has talents enough to learn to curse God, and imprecate perdition on themselves and their fellow-men. Profane swearing never did any man any good. No man is the richer or wiser or happier for it. It helps no one’s education or manners. It commends no one to any society. It is disgusting to the refined, abominable to the good, insulting to those with whom we associate, degrading to the mind, unprofitable, needless, and injurious to society; and wantonly to profane His name, to call His vengeance down, to curse Him, and to invoke His vengeance, is perhaps of all offences the most awful in the sight of God. Lowth.
Profane swearing is a direct insult on Almighty God, a daring affront to His supreme majesty, an insolent defiance of His justice and power, and a wanton trifling with one’s own salvation. It is a complication of many sins, such as impiety to God and contempt of His authority; the abuse of speech, that distinguishing faculty of man; unbelief in heart, a disregard to if not a real disbelief of the providence, Word, and judgment of God. In perjury there is always falsehood and injustice, and often higher crimes; there may be murder. In the lower kinds of profaneness there is levity, passion, indecency, rudeness, and brutality of manners. It tends to produce still greater hardness, to extinguish all reverence for God and sacred things, and thus to introduce all other sins. The profane swearer is heaping guilt on his soul. If for every idle word which men speak they must give an account, how heavy will be the account, and how awful the punishment of that man who daily multiplies his impious and profane words! God has declared that He will not hold such persons guiltless, that He will be a swift witness against them, that He will send His curse upon them here, and execute distinguished punishment upon them hereafter. J. Lathrop.
11-14. Next follows a specification of four classes of people, each one independent of the other; and what is remarkable in the case is, that nothing is predicated of them, as to what they are to do or will do (except in one case), or even as to any retribution which awaits them. They stand in no connection with the context; and they apparently represent prevailing vices, inasmuch as whole classes are specified. It seems to be taken for granted that each of these classes will be looked upon with high disapprobation. M. S.—There are four descriptions of men worthy of our avoidance and detestation: the first is of graceless children who curse their parents; the next of hypocrites and self-pleasers; the third of proud men, who are exalted in their own opinions; the fourth of cruel oppressors who kill and devour the poor. Bishop H.
12. Pure in their own eyes. In all works before grace there is no resignation of the soul to God in obedience; no self-denial of what stands in opposition to God in the heart; no clear view of the evil of sin; no sound humiliation under the corruption of nature; no inward purification of the heart, but only a diligence in an external polishing. All those acts cannot produce a habit of a different kind from them. If you could increase mere moral works to the highest pitch they are capable of, they can never make you gracious, because grace is another species, and the nature of them must be changed to make them of another kind. All the moral actions in the world will never make our hearts, of themselves, of another kind than moral. Works make not the heart good, but a good heart makes the works good. Charnock.
Moral virtue only restrains the outward man, it does not change the whole man. A lion in a grate is a lion still; he is restrained, but not changed, for he retains his lion-like nature still. So morality restrains many men from this and that wickedness, but it does not change and turn their hearts from wickedness. Brooke.—Single virtues of a man’s character are of little account, so long as the very foundation of his being is corrupt. It is a small thing for a man to show that he has never committed any memorable, flagrant sins. The opposition of the heart to God is of itself a thing meriting judgment-day condemnation. Nothing more than this is required to exclude a man from the glory of the eternal heavens. H. W. Beecher.
The great mischief of the merely moral or conscience-system of life is that it excludes the most powerful principle of disinterested action, which is a grateful trust in a love flowing infinitely from God, through Christ and His cross. Instead of this, it takes the iron rule of law or command. Of course, on that ground its only standard and hope of acceptance or success is in the more or less merit which comes of more or less obedience to that law. But, at this point, the soul, looking at the law, is awestruck to find it a perfect law, coming from a perfect author, allowing for no sin, and nowhere offering the least encouragement to a half-obedience. At the same moment it discovers, with dismay, that, owing to inherent propensities and passions, this obedience never was nor is likely to be perfect. Where is it, then? Merit is out of the question. The utmost duty falls short, and the servant is unprofitable at best. One of two things follows: this man must either deny to God His perfection of purity and to the law its binding authority, so as to make room for his shortcomings; or else he must sink into utter despair because they do nothing but condemn him. This would seem to be the result of the conscience system alone, without the mediatorship and its doctrines of reconciliation in Christ. It leaves man either without reverence or without peace, or both. And it engenders a poor habit of continual self reference, self-measurement, and self-centralization, instead of taking the soul up above itself, giving it an object there to live for, in gratitude and love. F. D. H.
There are different kinds of vice, but only one kind of sin—viz., the state of being without God, or out of allegiance to God. All evil and sin are of this same negative root, the want of any holy principle; the state set off from God, and disempowered and degraded by the separation. The respectable sin shades into the unrespectable, not as being different in kind, but only as twilight shades into the night. The evil spirit, called sin, may be trained up to politeness, and made to be genteel sin; it may be elegant, cultivated sin; it may be very exclusive and fashionable sin; it may be industrious, thrifty sin; it may be learned, scientific, eloquent, highly poetic sin; still it is sin, and, being that, has in fact the same radical or fundamental quality that, in its ranker and less restrained conditions, produce all the most hideous and revolting crimes of the world. There is a very great difference, I admit, between a generous man and a niggard, a man who lives in thought and a man who lives in appetite, a great and wise operator in the market and a thief; and yet, taken as apart from all accidental modifications or degrees, the sin-quality or principle is exactly the same in all. Nay, it is further true that respectable sin is more injurious, or a greater mischief, than the baser and more disgusting forms of vicious abandonment. The latter tempt no one. Contrary to this, they repel and warn away from vice every one that looks upon them. They hang out a flag of distress upon every shoal of temptation. They show us the last results of all sin, and the colors in which they exhibit sin are always disgusting, never attractive. We look down into the hell that vice opens, and with a shudder turn away! Meantime respectable sin—how attractive, how fascinating its pleasures! Its gay hours, its shows and equipages, its courteous society, its entertainments, its surroundings of courtly form and incident—how delicious to the inspection of fancy. Even its excesses seem to be only a name for spirit. But there is no such thing as taking away the evil of sin by making it respectable. Make it even virtuous, as men speak, and it will only be the worse in its power, as regards the enticements it offers to evil. It will not shock any one by deeds of robbery and murder, it will not revolt any one by its disgusting spectacles of shame and misery, but how many will it encourage and shield, in just that rejection of God, which is to be their bitter fall and their eternal overthrow. H. B.
15,16. The word rendered “horse-leech” occurs here only. Obviously he is a specimen of insatiability. Critics mostly agree that the word represents the vampire, a fiction of ancient mythology, supposed to frequent the desert and fasten upon its victims by night to suck their blood. Its two daughters may represent its organs for drawing blood. With this ideal conception the writer compares four other insatiable things, as in v. 16. He does not make any moral application of this group of things that are never satisfied, but seems to rest with grouping them together to illustrate each other. H. C.—We must suppose that the reader is left to apply these illustrations of an insatiable appetite to something within his own knowledge; for example, it was easy to apply them to the miser, the glutton, the drunkard, and the debauchee; although the writer has not himself expressly made such an application. M. S.
Nature is easily satisfied; but when men create for themselves imaginary wants, they only provide an inexhaustible stock of solicitude and disappointment. The craving appetite will still be crying, Give, give; and in the fulness of their sufficiency they will be in want. R. W.—Beyond a certain amount few can enjoy. Hence a moderate share, raising one above poverty, is all that wisdom will crave. But men seek wealth for its own sake, and so go through life as beasts of burden, with hardly more freedom from care than the poor larborer who earns just enough to procure him simple fare, clothing, and house rent for himself and family. Bennett.
16. The grave. Hebrew, Sheol. The “hell” or Hades of 27: 20, all-consuming yet never full. The other instances explain themselves. Strangely different as they are, they have this one attribute in common. E. H. P.
17. That eye here represents the person who sees is plain. Yet the image of the eye is carried out in the closing part of the verse. This eye, the ravens will pick out, the young eagles will devour it—vivid images are these of severe punishment. M. S.
There is a noteworthy fidelity here to the facts of natural history. The “ravens of the valley, or brook” still haunt the ravines of the torrent-streams of Syria. Their proneness to attack the eyes of living or dead animals is a matter of notoriety. E. H. P.—It is now very well ascertained that in point of fact ravens, which feed on carrion, do commence their repast by picking out the eyes of the animal whose carcass they have discovered. It is equally true that eagles and falcons, which take living prey, do, when the game is large and powerful, aim their stroke at the eyes, which instinct teaches them to be the readiest way of disabling their victim. This is a matter of familiar knowledge in Persia, where falconry is still maintained. Kitto.
All God’s commandments carry with them promises of rewards; and yet that which inculcates the giving of honor to one’s father and mother is pre-eminently “the commandment with promise,” since, in the arrangements of the Divine providence, the richest and the largest blessings most certainly attend its observance. Because true “obedience” is of the heart, and its exercise a spontaneous impulse, and is therefore not subject to merely prudential calculations, or special impulses, its action is uniform and continuous, and its results are assured. And, on the other hand, disobedience is menaced in advance with assurances of sorrows and destruction. The terrible fate denounced against the eye “that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother,” is not a special and arbitrary curse, but the outcome of an ever-active principle in the Divine administration in human affairs. Curry.
21-23. Four it cannot bear. Here the common element is that of being intolerable, and the four examples are divided equally between the two sexes. Each has its examples of power and prosperity misused because they fall to the lot of those who have had no training for them, and are therefore in the wrong place. 23. Odious woman. One in whom there is nothing lovable. Marriage, which to most women is the state in which they find scope for their highest qualities, blessing and being blest, becomes to her only a sphere in which to make herself and others miserable. E. H. P.
24-28. The remarkable instincts of this group of small animals constitute their special peculiarity. Each in his way seems to be “exceeding wise.” In these respects they suggest what man might do if he were to give himself earnestly to the study and the practice of the wisdom for which God has given him the capacity. H. C.
26. The shaphan (always translated by “coney”) is mentioned in several other places (Lev. 11), and in the law is included among unclean animals on the ground, that although “he cheweth the cud, he divideth not the hoof.” The particulars indicated in these texts agree most perfectly with an animal which has its especial home in the regions in which the Israelites abode, and which indeed derives from Syria the designation by which it is known among naturalists. This is known among the Arabs by the name of Wubar, externally something of the size, figure, and color of the rabbit. Kitto.—Now that the coney is ascertained to be the Damon or Hyrax, a shy, defenceless creature, which lurks among the cliffs of the mountains, and darts into its den at the least approach of danger, the words of Agur acquire their full significance. Hamilton.
27. The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands. Nothing in their habits is more striking than the pertinacity with which they all pursue the same line of march, like a disciplined army. As they have no king, they must be influenced by some common instinct. Thomson.
The ants know the time of their opportunity, and make the best of it. “The conies are a feeble folk.” The tenant is weak; the habitation is strong. Here is a puny, a very feeble folk, going up toward the great rock house. There is something very pathetic, very beautiful in that—in weakness seeking the granite, in feebleness hiding itself in some pavilion of rock. There is a Rock provided for all weakness. “The locusts have no king, yet they come forth all of them by bands”—a very beautiful and practical republic. They have no king, but every one of them has a little bit of kingliness in himself. Here I find co-operation. That is how it must be in business, in families, in churches, in governments, in all great confederacies of life. “The spider taketh hold with her hands,” etc. Does this mean skill? This skill will have its reward. Does it mean patience in working out elaborate and beautiful results? Then here is progress, getting into kings’ houses, into high places, into palatial position. J. P.
32,33. The decided self-control indicated by laying the hand upon the mouth is strongly recommended and enforced by the well-known law which is so finely put here in triple illustration: The violent agitation of milk brings butter; the wringing of the nose, blood; and a similar rough treatment of man’s sensibilities to anger fires up mad strife. This running comment assumes a logical connection between the four things noted for stately going (vs. 28-
31); the putting on of proud and haughty airs; the admonition against it appended (v. 32), and this final enforcement of the admonition in v. 33. H. C.