Thread 18007994

I was doing some research about Proverbs 30:1-4 and had some insight I felt like might be worth sharing. I hope you find it interesting and useful!

At a face value reading of Proverbs 30:4:

Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Whose hands have gathered up the wind? Who has wrapped up the waters in a cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is the name of his son? Surely you know!

Any Christian would immediately understand that the Son here is Christ.

However, for fairness sake, I looked into how Jewish apologists handle these verses.

Essentially, the opening verses 1-3 are to be understood as the speaker trying to appeal to God's inscrutability and majesty by debasing himself. Afterwards, verse 4 is presented rhetorically, as the answer to the first 4 questions of verse 4 would be more less known to Agur:

God has gone up to heaven and come down

God has gathered up all the wind

God has wrapped the waters in a cloak

God has established all the ends of the earth

Therefore, the last two questions are also understood rhetorically. Agur understands:

The name of God is YHWH

The name of His son is Israel (used how "son" is used to describe Israel in Exodus 4:22, Hosea 1:10)

This is passable if Agur was speaking to the reader, indeed the OT uses rhetorical questions like this for the reader elsewhere. However, Agur is speaking to God from verse 1!

I am weary, God, but I can prevail...

>>18007994 (OP)
So if we accept that Agur knows all the rhetorical answers to all his questions in verse 4 before he asks them, we must read verses 1-3 as Agur feigning humility before God.

In this understanding, he is saying to God, "I am vocalizing that I don't know anything about you, but I actually do." This understanding is problematic because he explicitly states:

I have not learned wisdom, nor have I attained to the knowledge of the Holy One.

That is a pretty powerful statement to be made in false humility - to God. This false humility would become hypocrisy when weighed against Agur's request to the Lord to:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me...

As he would be lying to God.

So how else can we understand this passage?

In Hebrew, the word used for "name" is šēm. This can mean a literal name, or the character and essence of a person.

So when Agur asks, "what is His name?", he isn't asking rhetorically, "what are the literal syllables we call God?" - Agur knows that, it's YHWH. He is asking, "what is His true essence? Who is He really?"

If we view the passage in this light, we read verses 1-3 as Agur earnestly humbling himself before God. When he says, "I have not learned wisdom, nor have I attained to the knowledge of the Holy One", he really means it.

When he presents his four questions, he knows intellectually the answer to all four, but he is begging for the character and essence of the answer. "What is the character of the one who has established all the ends of the Earth?"

>>18007996
And the last two questions are earnest and direct towards God. "What is your essence God? And what is the essence of your Son?"

Christ answers this question for us... but Agur doesn't know (yet).

Therefore, it makes perfect sense why Agur ends his queries with, "Surely you know!" in reference to God, as God is the only one who knows the answer to those questions completely.

Even from a neutral standpoint, it seems hard to believe that Agur would feign humility then rhetorically question God. Whereas, the interpretation of a genuine pleading desire to know God's essence better seems far more in touch with the earnest pleading Agur does in the rest of Proverbs 30.

What do you think? Am I missing something?