Opens the four things too wonderful, Proverbs 30:18–20.
Quick answer
The saying's header, and it is a confession before it is a list. He is not introducing four marvels. He is introducing four things he does not understand.
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Four things that leave no trace behind them, followed by a woman who assumes the same about what she has done.
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The chapter's second numerical saying, and the only one whose subject is Agur's own bafflement. He is not listing things that are impressive. He is listing four things he cannot work out, and the word he uses, נִפְלְאוּ, is the word for something beyond a person rather than something beyond belief.
What the four share is that they leave nothing behind. An eagle crosses the sky and the sky closes. A snake crosses bare rock and there is no track. A ship crosses open water, and the Hebrew says it goes through the heart of the sea, which the NKJV footnotes; the wake heals. Then the fourth, a man with a young woman, and the saying stops there without explaining itself. After three pictures of a path that vanishes, the fourth is about two people, and it is filed under wonder, not under warning.
Then verse 20 uses the same word, way, for something else entirely. A woman commits adultery, eats, wipes her mouth, and says she has done nothing wrong. Whether that verse was originally part of the saying is genuinely disputed, and the catalog treats it as part of the unit while noting the dispute. What connects it is the tracelessness. Three of the four wonders leave no mark, and here is someone counting on that.
And that is where the unit joins the rest of the chapter. "I have done no wickedness" is verse 12 again in a different mouth: pure in its own eyes, and not washed. The chapter's real subject keeps turning out to be the person who has acquitted themselves.
What this verse contributes
The frame, and its tone. The three-then-four pattern is standard in this kind of saying, with the weight falling on the last item. What is not standard is the first person. Agur does not say these things are wonderful; he says they are wonderful for me, too high for him, and the second line drops even that and says flatly that he does not know them.
Which is where he started. Verse 2 said he was more stupid than any man and verse 3 said he never learned wisdom. The man who opened the chapter by disclaiming understanding is now showing you four specific places he does not have it, and the effect is not embarrassment. It is a wisdom teacher demonstrating that a limit can be named without apology.
Related: Proverbs 30:2–3 · Proverbs 30:24 · Job 42:3
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.