Part of Agur's confession, Proverbs 30:1–6.
Quick answer
He did not get the education and he does not have the knowledge of God. Both halves are denials, and the second one uses the book's own phrase for its highest prize.
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Agur states that he has no wisdom, asks six questions to which the answer is nobody, and lands on the two things he will assert: God's word is tested, and no one may add to it.
Read the whole unit
A new voice takes over the book here, and almost everything about him is uncertain. Agur son of Jakeh is named nowhere else in scripture. His father is unknown. The two words the NKJV reads as the names Ithiel and Ucal can be divided differently in the Hebrew consonants, which is why English versions differ so widely at verse 1, and the header word הַמַּשָּׂא can be read as a place name or as the ordinary word for an oracle. He may not have been an Israelite at all. The book of Proverbs, which has spent twenty-nine chapters teaching the fear of the LORD, hands six verses to a man whose credentials cannot be checked.
Then he opens by saying he has none. Verses 2 and 3 are not modesty. They are a denial: he did not learn wisdom, he does not have the knowledge of the Holy One, he is duller than any man. And the phrase he uses in verse 3 is the exact phrase 9:10 used for what wisdom hands you. He is standing in the wisdom book saying he does not have the wisdom book's prize.
Verse 4 explains why. Six questions, all rhetorical, all with the same answer: nobody here. Who went up to heaven and came back down, who held the wind, who tied up the water, who set the edges of the earth. The questions are Job's questions from the whirlwind and Isaiah's questions in chapter 40, and they arrive at the same place. Then the last question turns strange, asking not only for God's name but for His son's, and daring the reader to supply either.
And having established that he knows nothing, Agur says the one thing he does know. Verse 5: God's own speech has been tested and it holds. Verse 6: so do not put words in His mouth. That is the entire confession. A man with no credentials, no training and no claim ends up in the only position that was ever safe, which is holding on to what God actually said and refusing to improve it. The wisdom book's most humiliating opening produces its plainest doctrine of scripture, and the order is not an accident.
What this verse contributes
The precision of the denial. דַעַת קְדֹשִׁים is not a general phrase for piety. It is the exact phrase 9:10 uses at the close of Wisdom's invitation: "the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Agur is not saying he lacks religion. He is saying he lacks the specific thing the book has just spent nine chapters offering, and he is saying it in the book's own words.
The plural form קְדֹשִׁים, literally the holy ones, is the same form 9:10 carries and is standardly read as an intensive for the Holy One, which is how the NKJV renders both.
From this side of the cross
There is a version of Christian confidence that requires you to first establish that you understand God, and this verse cuts under it. The man who says plainly that he does not have the knowledge of the Holy One is the man scripture then quotes for thirty more verses. Not knowing is not the same as being disqualified, which is worth saying to anyone who has been told their doubts put them outside.
Related: Proverbs 9:10 · Proverbs 2:5 · Proverbs 1:7
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.