Proverbs 30:12

Proverbs 30 belongs to Agur son of Jakeh (Proverbs 30:1), about whom we know very little outside this chapter. His sayings stand apart from Solomon’s collections, and he is fond of numbered lists, as the sayings of Proverbs 30:15–31 show. Just before our passage he confesses how limited his own understanding is and prays for truth and integrity (Proverbs 30:7–9). Then he turns to look at the people around him.

Verse 10 is a single piece of counsel about the tongue. Verses 11 to 14 are a set of four portraits, each beginning “There is a generation”. They start with the breakdown of respect inside the family, go on to a person’s false view of himself and his contempt for others, and end with open violence against the weak. Verses 10 and 11 share the Hebrew verb for cursing, qâlal: the slandered servant curses the one who wronged him, and the first generation curses its own father.

“Accuse not a servant unto his master, lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty.” The verb behind “accuse”, lâshan, is formed from the noun for the tongue, lâshôn, and it means to use the tongue against someone, to slander. Agur is forbidding malicious talk, backbiting and unfounded complaint carried to the person who holds power over another.

The servant, ʻebed, is a bondman or servant of any kind. In Israel the word covered people who served to pay off a debt or for a set time as well as hired labourers. The master, ʼâdôwn, is the lord or owner under whose authority the servant worked. God’s law gave servants real protection. It sheltered the slave who had escaped (Deuteronomy 23:15–16) and laid down how a Hebrew servant was to be treated (Leviticus 25:39–43). Even so, a servant’s living, standing and good name hung on what his master thought of him, and a word in the master’s ear could ruin his life. The one who carries the tale usually stands in the stronger place, and the proverb lays the responsibility on him.

This is one case of something Scripture teaches throughout. Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21), and the one who guards his mouth keeps himself from trouble (Proverbs 21:23). The law forbade spreading a false report (Exodus 23:1), which belongs with the ninth commandment against false witness. The psalm that asks who may dwell on God’s holy hill names the one who keeps his tongue from backbiting (Psalm 15:3), and James warns of the great harm so small a part of the body can do (James 3:5–6). God judges the malice of the tongue as surely as he judges open acts of injustice.

The Hebrew word dôwr is the ordinary word for a generation or an age, and it can also name a group of people who share a character. That is its sense in all four verses. Agur is describing kinds of people found in every age, so the portraits fit the old as well as the young, and our own day as well as his. The word also tells us that each of these sins is shared and widespread. It marks a whole class of people, and it is a sign of sickness in the society where they live.

“There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother.” The two halves describe two forms of the same dishonour. To curse, qâlal again, is to treat a father with contempt, to revile him and wish him ill. To bless, bârak, comes from a root meaning to kneel, and it covers both adoring God and doing good to another person. In a few places Scripture uses it as a polite word for cursing, but here it has its plain sense. The mother of this generation is denied all of it: honour, thanks and good wishes are deliberately held back. So the verse covers the loud sin of the mouth and the quieter sin of silence, and Agur counts both.

“There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.” The word for pure, ṭâhôwr, means clean, whether in body, in the ceremonies of worship or in morals. The eye, ʻayin, is where this verdict is given: they are clean by their own sight, with only themselves for judge. The word for filthiness, tsôwʼâh, is a strong and unpleasant one, used for excrement and dirt, and here it stands for moral pollution. The verb for washing, râchats, is the everyday word for washing or bathing, usually with water.

Israel lived with laws of clean and unclean that reached into daily life, with washings prescribed for many kinds of defilement (Leviticus 11–15). Every hearer knew that a person is unclean until he is washed, whatever he thinks of himself. Agur applies that to the heart. This generation has pronounced itself clean while the dirt is still on it.

“There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up.” The verb rûwm means to be high, to rise or to raise, and so to exalt oneself. “Lofty eyes” (rûm ʻenayim) was Israel’s common expression for arrogance, and “eyelids lifted up” (ʻaphʻaphîm nāśāʼû) says the same thing a second time with more force. Together they describe a settled way of carrying oneself, the look of a person who holds others beneath him.

In Israel the set of the head and eyes was a language everyone understood. A lowered gaze showed humility, submission or shame, and a high one showed pride and disdain. In anyone such a look announced a superiority he had no right to claim, and it offended against the respect owed to elders, to those in authority and to the weak. The eye shows what is in the heart, and Agur’s “O how” lets us hear his dismay at the sight.

God has said what he thinks of this look. “Him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer” (Psalm 101:5). Proverbs calls a high look and a proud heart sin (Proverbs 21:4) and warns that pride goes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18). God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Pride is the opposite of the fear of the LORD, which is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). It also has victims. The person who looks down on others soon feels free to use them, and Proverbs warns against oppressing the poor (Proverbs 14:31). That is where Agur goes next.

“There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.” The word for swords, chereb, names a sword or any cutting tool, such as a knife. Teeth are given for eating, and in these people they have become weapons. The picture is of a beast of prey tearing at weaker creatures, with all human feeling gone.

The verb ʼâkal is the common word for eating, and it is used figuratively for devouring and consuming. Here it describes stripping people of their living, their dignity and even their lives. The poor, ʻânîy, are the afflicted and lowly, and the needy, ʼebyôwn, are the destitute. “From off the earth” and “from among men” show how far the appetite goes. Agur uses the strongest language he can for a ruthlessness that would leave the poor with nothing and with no place among their neighbours.

God had provided for the poor in his law. The edges of the field and the gleanings were left for them (Leviticus 19:9–10), debts were released in the seventh year (Deuteronomy 15:1–11), and justice was guarded for the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 24:17–22). The powerful often ignored these laws, and the prophets charged them with it. Amos and Isaiah condemn those who crush the poor (Amos 2:6–7, Isaiah 3:14–15), and Micah uses Agur’s own picture of rulers who “eat the flesh of my people” (Micah 3:1–3). A psalm describes the wicked man lying in wait for the poor like a lion (Psalm 10:8–9), and James reminds the church that God has chosen the poor whom the rich oppress (James 2:5–6).

Each of these five verses has its answer in Jesus. He is the servant, who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He was slandered himself, when false witnesses were sought against him (Matthew 26:59–60). A wronged servant might curse his accusers, and Jesus prayed for his: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He also taught that words will be weighed: “For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matthew 12:37). Being “found guilty” looks ahead to the day when each of us gives account of himself to God (Romans 14:12).

The first generation curses its father, and Jesus honoured Mary and Joseph and, above all, his Father in heaven. His whole life was obedience, up to the prayer in the garden, “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). He upheld the fifth commandment against the Pharisees, who used their tradition to set aside the duty owed to father and mother (Matthew 15:3–6). Through him a new generation is born of the Spirit, people whose hearts once cursed and now bless.

For the unwashed he is the washing. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and his blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Those who are pure only in their own eyes stay as they are. Those who confess their sin are made clean and are counted righteous in God’s sight with the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Against lofty eyes stands the one who, though he was in the form of God, took the form of a servant, “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:6–8). His eyes looked on the crowds with compassion, as sheep having no shepherd (Matthew 9:36). He taught, “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12), and his people are called to be clothed with humility, for God gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5).

And where the last generation devours the poor, Jesus gave his own body for others. He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11). He counts what is done for the least of his brethren as done to himself (Matthew 25:40), and he condemned the scribes “which devour widows’ houses” (Luke 20:47). In him the hungry are filled with good things (Luke 1:53) and the gospel is preached to the poor (Luke 4:18–19).

These verses are a mirror, and it is easier to see other people in it than ourselves. Yet each portrait begins small. The tale carried to someone’s employer, the thanks a mother is still waiting for, the quiet certainty of being a decent person, the glance that dismisses someone, and the bargain that profits from another’s need are where each generation starts.

The passage also shows us who God is. He hears the servant nobody else would believe. He stands behind the honour of fathers and mothers. He sees through the good opinion we hold of ourselves, and he is the one who washes. He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, and he has taken the cause of the poor as his own. In Christ he is making a different generation, people who bless, who have been made clean, who look on others with compassion, and who feed the needy.