The leech has two daughters—Give and Give!There are three things that are never satisfied,Four never say, “Enough!”:
The grave,The barren womb,The earth that is not satisfied with water—And the fire never says, “Enough!”
Proverbs 30:15–16 · NKJVPart of The Leech's Two Daughters, Proverbs 30:15–16.
Quick answer
The list itself: the grave, the barren womb, dry ground, and fire. Four things that take without ever reaching a limit, and none of them is being scolded for it.
Read the whole unit
Read the whole unit
This is one saying broken across two verses. Verse 15 opens with a grotesque little joke, a bloodsucker with twin daughters who can only say one word, and then abandons the joke mid-verse for a counted list that verse 16 supplies. Read half of it and you get either a leech with no list or a list with no leech.
The four items are not moral failures. A grave, an empty womb, thirsty ground, and fire are not being accused of greed; they are being observed. Each one takes what it is given and remains exactly as it was. The list is about the structure of appetite rather than about anybody's character, which is what makes the leech at the front so pointed: the leech is the one item on the list that is alive and choosing, and it has been placed at the head of four things that simply cannot fill.
Notice how far this reaches back into the chapter. The verb שָׂבַע, to be satisfied or full, runs through Agur's material four times: he prayed at verse 9 not to be full and deny God, and here it appears twice more in the space of two lines. The prayer and the list are asking the same question from opposite ends: what happens to a person who never arrives at enough.
Why translations differ
The second item in verse 16 is שְׁאוֹל, standing alone with no אֲבַדּוֹן beside it, and the NKJV prints "The grave" with a footnote reading Or Sheol. The same translation renders that identical word "Hell" at 15:11 and at 27:20. One Bible, one Hebrew word, two English words, and the choice quietly changes what a reader thinks the verse is about.
Sheol in the Old Testament is the realm of the dead, where everyone goes. It is not a doctrine of final judgment, and this verse is not teaching one in either direction. What the saying claims about it is only what the picture claims: it has never yet been full. That is an observation anyone standing in a cemetery can make, and it is all the verse asks for.
What it does not mean
The barren womb is on this list as an ache, not as an accusation, and this is the item most likely to wound the person reading it. Nothing here calls a woman greedy. The list is of things that receive and remain empty, and a woman who cannot conceive is the clearest case in it of a longing that does not resolve by being told to want less. Scripture nowhere treats that longing as a fault. Rachel says "Give me children, or else I die," and the text records it without a word of rebuke. Hannah prays in bitterness of soul and is not corrected for it.
So the verse must never be turned around and used on someone. It is not evidence that a childless person is discontented, not a diagnosis of their prayers, and not a hint that they should stop asking. A saying that lists an empty womb beside a grave is treating it as a grief, which is the honest thing to do with it.
What this verse contributes
the four items, and the surprise inside them. Three are simply the world as it is, and the fourth, fire, is the one that will actively spread to get more.
The other half
A leech with two daughters whose names are both Give, and then a list opened but not yet filled. The verse cannot be read alone, because the four things it counts are in the next verse.
Related: Proverbs 27:20 · Proverbs 15:11 · Ecclesiastes 1:7–8 · Proverbs 30:9
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.