Part of Agur's confession, Proverbs 30:1–6.
Quick answer
After four verses of not knowing, here is what Agur will say he knows: God's speech has been tested and came through, and the people who trust it are covered.
Read the whole unit
The confession's turn. Having established that he has no wisdom and cannot name God, Agur states the two things that survive: God's words are proven, and they must not be added to.
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 one certainty, and it is not about Agur. The NKJV footnotes pure as tested, refined, found pure, which is the metallurgy image: the word has been through the fire and what came out is what went in. The second line is almost word for word Psalm 18:30, repeated at 2 Samuel 22:31, where the NKJV reads "the word of the LORD is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him." Agur is not composing this. He is quoting Israel's own worship back, and the man who says he never learned wisdom evidently knew the Psalms.
One detail worth noticing: where the Psalm says the LORD, Agur says אֱלוֹהַּ, Eloah, the more general word for God. It fits a speaker who may be standing outside Israel and reaching for what he can honestly say.
From this side of the cross
The order in this unit is the whole comfort. The shield is not offered to the person who answered the six questions. It is offered to the person who could not answer any of them and is still holding on. Trust is what verse 5 asks for, and trust is exactly what a man with no credentials has left.
Related: Psalm 18:30 · 2 Samuel 22:31 · Proverbs 2:7
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.