Part of the four small and wise, Proverbs 30:24–28.
Quick answer
The first of four. Ants have no strength and no way to fight for anything, so they solve the problem earlier instead, while there is still summer.
Read the whole unit
Four small creatures, each holding what it needs without holding what you would expect it to need.
Read the whole unit
This is the one numerical saying in the chapter that does not count three and then four. The others build tension by naming a smaller number first; this one simply says four, and gets on with it. Whatever the reason, the effect is that nothing is being saved for the end. All four items are equal.
The claim is in the header. These are קְטַנֵּי־אָרֶץ, the small of the earth, and they are חֲכָמִים מְחֻכָּמִים, a doubled form the NKJV renders exceedingly wise. The saying is not arguing that small things can be useful. It is arguing that wisdom and power have nothing to do with each other, and it proves it four times: not strong, yet provisioned; feeble, yet secure; no king, yet ordered; small enough to catch in a hand, yet living in a palace.
Three of the four are built the same way, with a lack stated and then overturned. The fourth breaks the pattern and states no lack at all, which leaves the list ending on an image rather than an argument.
And the placement is doing something. The man making this list opened the chapter by saying he was more stupid than any man. He is not writing from above these creatures. He put himself on the list before he made it.
What this verse contributes
The pattern's first run, and a lesson different from the one the book has already drawn from ants. 6:6 sends a sluggard to the ant to be shamed out of laziness. This verse is not doing that. Here the ant is not a rebuke to anybody; it is evidence for a claim about wisdom and size. The word עַם, people, is worth noticing too, since it treats the colony as a society rather than as a swarm.
What the ant has instead of strength is timing. It cannot defend a store, so it builds one before the season that would have destroyed it. That is a form of wisdom available to something that weighs nothing.
Related: Proverbs 6:6–8 · Proverbs 10:5
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.