Roland Murphy on Proverbs 30:4

4 Five rhetorical questions follow which seem to underline the point that has been made about the great divide between the divine and the human. The speaker is not identified; it could be Agur himself who exalts God by these questions, or an imagined interlocutor. A. Barucq claims that v 4 is spoken by God. In any case, it seems obvious that the answer to the first four queries is: God. The questions are reminiscent of those that God directs to Job in Job 38–41. The only suggestion of sarcasm occurs at the end of the fifth question, “if you know”; cf. Job 38:18. This final question of v 4 is really a double question, and the obvious answer (God) to the first seems to be canceled by the nature of the second question: What is the name of the son? Are the questions as simple as they seem, or is some sort of riddle involved? The first four questions are straightforward: (1) God moves between heaven and earth. The idea of a human making such a move to flee from God is entertained by the psalmist in Ps 139:8, only to be recognized as impossible. What is odd is the question itself, since God is already in heaven by definition. But perhaps the question, even unconsciously, recalls the question about the torah in Deut 30:12, “who of us can go up to the heavens and get it?” Another even more pointed biblical echo is found in Bar 3:29, “who has gone up to heaven and taken her (wisdom!).” For a thorough investigation of the topos of heavenly ascent and descent in the ancient Near East, see the study by R. C. Van Leeuwen, who concludes (“Background,” 121): “The main purpose of the topos is to reaffirm the great gulf that separates humans from the divine realm and the prerogatives of deity, such as immortality, superhuman knowledge, wisdom, and power.” (2) This question is picturesque—holding the wind in the hollow of the hand. According to Amos 4:13, God created the wind, which he contains in vaults; cf. Ps 135:7. (3) The third query deals with the rainwater that is described as in Job 26:8; the “cloak” is the clouds that contain the rain. (4) Finally, it is God who has established the ends of the earth, i.e., the furthest confines; cf. Ps 22:28; see also Prov 8:27–29. (5) But the fifth question is totally different from the previous ones. It concerns identity, and it begins with “what” and not “who.” It is not easy to answer. Many commentators see it as sarcastic and ironic, as the last two words may suggest. But it is not clear why the name of the son is included with the question. Whybray remarks in his commentary that “this is not an enquiry after the nature of the identity of the creator-god; rather, Agur is asked ironically to name a human being able to do these things.” But why should a third party, “a human being,” be introduced here? Whybray is correct in pointing out that the reference cannot be to the “sons” in the heavenly court, since they are never identified by name in the Old Testament.Irony, then, does not really explain the mention of the son or the query about the son’s name. This final question has the characteristics of a riddle. If so, the most challenging explanation has been offered by P. Skehan, who finds an answer in the data of the heading (v 1, Agur, son of Jakeh [יקה]). Translated, Agur means “I am a sojourner,” and this correlates with Gen 47:9, where Jacob describes himself to Pharaoh, “the number of the years of my sojournings (מגורי) is 130 years.” And the psalmist, Ps 39:13, describes himself as a גר, a תושׁב, “a transient.” By his very name then, Agur suggests that he is a mere mortal inhabiting this earth. In addition, his denial of having knowledge of the Holy One (v 3) is reminiscent of the γνῶσιν ἁγίων, “knowledge of holy ones,” attributed to Jacob in Wis 10:10. The allusions in this passage become more striking. The initial question about going up to heaven and coming down can be associated with Gen 28:12–13 where Jacob’s dream is described: he sees “angels of God” going up and down a ladder that reaches to the “heavens,” and the Lord is standing beside Jacob. Agur is a Doppelgänger for Jacob, and Jacob/Israel is the Lord’s son according to Exod 4:22, “Israel is my son, my firstborn.” Agur/Jacob, then, is the son of יקה (spelled in English as Jakeh in v 1). But who is יקה? He is the Lord. The name יקה is “an abbreviation of Yhwh qādōš hūʾ, an antecedent to the well-known haqqādōš, bārûk hūʾ of later times” (Skehan, Studies, 43). According to this explanation, the answer to the riddle in the fifth question is: Agur (= Jacob/Israel), the son of the Lord. One should recall the mention of riddles in the prologue to the book of Proverbs, 1:6. The final question of v 4 has created a riddle out of vv 1–4. Van Leeuwen (NIB., 5:251) disagrees with the riddle interpretation because everyone knew the name YHWH. But the point of the riddle is to lead the reader to the acknowledgment of the Lord’s creative power and (covenant) relationship to Agur-Israel, not to reveal the sacred name. It may be objected that the answer to the first four questions is too obvious to form a riddle, but the riddle is not really there; it is in the final double question. The very obviousness of the first four questions sets the reader up, as it were, for the last mysterious question. (Murphy, R. E. [1998]. Proverbs [Wallas: Word Bible Commentary, Vol. 22, pp. 228–229])