I. The Exposure of Pretended Wisdom (30:1–3) – A Warning in the Form of Self-Speech

A. 30:1 – The Enigmatic Speaker and His Hearers

Introduction of “Agur the son of Jakeh”
- Some take this at face value: a man named Agur, son of Jakeh, about whom we know nothing else.
  - Fair enough. But that raises the obvious question: If he's unknown, why is his work preserved in the royal archives of Solomon's Proverbs?
- A better explanation—rooted in both the literary style of wisdom literature and rabbinical tradition—is that this is Solomon writing under a pseudonym.
  - Hebrew culture, especially in reflective or poetic texts, often used meaningful names as literary devices (Koheleth, Lemuel, Nabal, etc.).
  - This is a well-established rabbinic view, and perhaps the most common among Jewish interpretations of Proverbs 30.
    - For example, the Jerusalem Targum and various Midrashim interpret Agur as Solomon.
  - This view was also well-attested in early Christianity.
    - Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (4th century) reflects the Jewish identification of Agur with Solomon: it renders Proverbs 30:1 as
      
      “Verba Congregantis filii Vomentis, visio quam locutus est vir…”
      
      —literally, “The words of the Collector (congregantis), son of the One Who Vomits (vomentis), the vision which the man spoke…”
    - This shows that by Jerome’s time, the Solomonic identity of Agur was assumed, at least in learned circles, and the chapter was considered part of Solomon’s corpus.
- If “Agur” is a pseudonym, then it deserves to be translated, not just transliterated.
  - Agur likely means “gatherer”—a collector, especially of sayings.
  - Jakeh is more difficult. It can be rendered “spitter” or “the one who vomits.”
    - Could it be Solomon is saying: “I’m the collector of wisdom... and I spit it out”?
    - That is: I’m the man who gathered proverbs for the court, now I’m coughing them up with a sense of fear for the future.
  - If so, it’s not a confession of ignorance—it’s a literary performance of warning. A father giving his son one last shot to listen before it all comes undone.
Spoken to Ithiel and Ucal—names meaning “God is with me” and “I am able,” which may serve as ironic epithets for Rehoboam.
- If these are symbolic of Rehoboam’s mindset, then the proverb is a prophetic caution against presumptuous kingship.
- The traits warned against throughout the chapter mirror Rehoboam’s later failure: arrogance, rashness, gullibility, and injustice.

B. 30:2-3 A Prophetic Mirror for Rehoboam

Note: most take these as a confession of King Solomon himself, and not without some merit, namely in the pronouns. However, could it be that Solomon is not giving a confession but rather a prophetic portrayal, in first-person, of the future words of Rehoboam?
- If that’s the case, then vv. 2–3 becomes a portrait of the fool-king Rehoboam would become, clothed in poetic irony. It's not Solomon saying, “I am a beast,” but rather, “This is what you look like when you wear the crown without wisdom.”
- Taking this view makes vv. 2-3 match the prophetic demands of the description of Agur’s words as “prophecy.”
- There are examples of this kind of prophetic “mock confession” in the Hebrew prophets:
  - “We have no king, for we feared not the LORD” (Hosea 10:3).
  - “I am rich, I have found me out substance” (Hosea 12:8).
  - “I shall not sit as a widow…” (Isaiah 47:8) – God’s parody of Babylon’s self-confidence.
Rehoboam is the immediate audience (whether directly or through epithets like Ithiel/Ucal). So Solomon’s “confession” in vv. 2–3 likely serves as a warning disguised as self-deprecation.
- Solomon is not really calling himself a brute or unwise. Rather, he saying: “This is where you’re headed, my son, if you don’t humble yourself. You will be brutish. You will lack understanding. You will not know the holy.”
- Compare to Rehoboam:
  - He rejected the counsel of the wise.
  - He ruled like a brute—threatening the people with scorpions.
  - He split the kingdom within days.
  - He forsook the Torah that Solomon had laid out so carefully.

II. The Supremacy of God's Wisdom (30:4) – A Riddle and a Rebuke

A. 30:4 – A Barrage of Questions to Bring Down a King

Five rhetorical questions that confront the arrogance of man—and especially of a young king.
1. “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?”
2. “Who hath gathered the wind in his fists?”
3. “Who hath bound the waters in a garment?”
4. “Who hath established all the ends of the earth?”
5. “What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?”
The questions echo Job and Deuteronomy, pointing to God’s incomprehensible wisdom and sovereign power.
They also function as a rebuke to royal pretension:
- Rehoboam cannot govern what he cannot comprehend.
- He is being subtly reminded: You are not God. You are not even close.
The final question—“What is his name, and what is his son’s name?”—places Rehoboam under covenantal scrutiny:
- Do you bear the name of God's son in the Davidic line?
- Do you resemble the kind of son God delights in (cf. Psalm 2, 2 Sam 7:14)?
- Rehoboam will fail this test—he will not know the name, nor act like the son.

B. Alternate View: The Christological Interpretation

Many Christian commentators take Proverbs 30:4 as a veiled reference to Christ, especially:
- “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?” → Seen as prefiguring John 3:13, where Jesus says:
  
  “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man…”
- “What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?” → Often read as a hidden Trinitarian hint, pointing to Jesus as the divine Son.
Problems with This Interpretation:
- Anachronistic: It imposes later theological categories on a text whose immediate context is Torah-based rebuke, not messianic prophecy.
- Contextually jarring: The verse flows out of a lament over human ignorance (vv. 2–3) and leads into a celebration of God's flawless word (v. 5)—not into a messianic hope.
- Disrupts genre and tone: The proverb functions like Job’s speeches—not as predictive oracle but as a rhetorical humbling of human pride.
- Misses the audience: This is Solomon (as Agur) speaking to Rehoboam, not Isaiah announcing a Davidic deliverer. It’s covenantal father-to-son discourse, not eschatological vision.
In short: The Christological view imports theology that the text isn’t offering.

It might sound profound in hindsight, but it misses the thunderclap of the original point:

“You are not God. You’re barely even wise. Start there.”