Opens the only prayer in Proverbs, Proverbs 30:7–9.
Quick answer
The prayer's preface. He asks for two things and asks that they not be withheld for as long as he lives, which tells you he means to need them the whole way.
Read the whole unit
⚑ ANCHOR UNIT. This passage is worked in full elsewhere; the catalog summarizes and points, and the member entries below are deliberately brief.
The only prayer in the book of Proverbs, and the man praying it has just finished saying he knows nothing. He asks for two things. The first is to be kept from falsehood. The second is to be given neither poverty nor riches, but the ration that belongs to him.
What makes it a prayer rather than an opinion about money is verse 9, where he gives his reasons, and both reasons are about God rather than about comfort. Too much and he will deny God and ask who the LORD is. Too little and he will steal, and stealing will drag God's name through it. He is not asking for a moderate lifestyle because moderation is admirable. He is asking to be spared the two situations in which he expects to fail. That is a man who knows himself, praying accordingly.
Two things the passage does not do. It does not make the middle a spiritual achievement, and it does not make wealth or poverty a verdict on anybody. Agur prays this about himself, in the first person, and prayers in the first person are not policies for other people. A person in poverty is not being told their situation is God's ideal, and 13:23 stands behind that: there is food in the fallow ground of the poor, and lack of justice sweeps it away.
What this verse contributes
The count and the timeframe. Numbering the requests before making them is the same numerical habit that runs through the rest of the chapter, now turned toward God. And the parenthesis is the honest part: not "grant these once" but "do not stop." He expects the danger to last as long as he does.
Related: Proverbs 30:18 · Proverbs 30:24
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.