Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 30:1 - 30:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The title of this first appendix, according to the text lying before us, is:
“The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the utterance.”
This title of the following collection of proverbs is limited by Olewejored; and הַמַּשָּׂא, separated from the author's name by Rebia, is interpreted as a second inscription, standing on one line with דִּבְרֵי, as particularizing that first. The old synagogue tradition which, on the ground of the general title Pro 1:1, regarded the whole Book of Proverbs as the work of Solomon, interpreted the words, “Agur the son of Jakeh,” as an allegorical designation of Solomon, who appropriated the words of the Tôra to the king, Deu 17:17, and again rejected them, for he said: God is with me, and I shall not do it (viz., take many wives, without thereby suffering injury), Schemôth rabba, c. 6. The translation of Jerome: Verba congregantis filii Vomentis, is the echo of this Jewish interpretation. One would suppose that if “Agur” were Solomon's name, “Jakeh” must be that of David; but another interpretation in Midrash Mishle renders בן (“son”) as the designation of the bearer of a quality, and sees in “Agur” one who girded (אגר = חגר) his loins for wisdom; and in “son of Jakeh” one free from sin (חטא ועון נקי מכל). In the Middle Ages this mode of interpretation, which is historically and linguistically absurd, first began to prevail; for then the view was expressed by several (Aben Ezra, and Meîri the Spaniard) that Agur ben Jakeh was a wise man of the time of Solomon. That of Solomon's time, they thence conclude (blind to Pro 25:1) that Solomon collected together these proverbs of the otherwise unknown wise man. In truth, the age of the man must remain undecided; and at all events, the time of Hezekiah is the fixed period from which, where possible, it is to be sought. The name “Agur” means the gathered (Pro 6:8; Pro 10:5), or, after the predominant meaning of the Arab. âjar, the bribed, mercede conductum; also the collector (cf. יָקוּשׁ, fowler); or the word might mean, perhaps, industrious in collecting (cf. 'alwaḳ, attached to, and other examples in Mühlau, p. 36). Regarding בִּן = binj (usual in בִּן־נּוּן), and its relation to the Arab. ibn, vid., Genesis, p. 555. The name Jakeh is more transparent. The noun יִקְהָה, Pro 30:17; Gen 49:10, means the obedient, from the verb יָקַהּ; but, formed from this verbal stem, the form of the word would be יָקֵהַּ (not יָקֶה). The form יָקֶה is the participial adj. from יָקָה, like יָפֶה from יָפָה; and the Arab. waḳay, corresponding to this יָקָה, viii. ittaḳay, to be on one's guard, particularly before God; the usual word fore piety regarded as εὐλάβεια. Mühlau (p. 37) rightly sees in the proper names Eltekeh [Jos 19:44] and Eltekon [Jos 15:59] the secondary verbal stem תָּקָה, which, like e.g., תָּוָה (תָּאָה), תָּאַב, עָתַד, has originated from the reflexive, which in these proper names, supposing that אל is subj., means to take under protection; not: to give heed = cavere. All these meanings are closely connected. In all these three forms - יָקַהּ, יָקָה, תָּקָה - the verb is a synonym of שׁמר; so that יָקֶה denotes
(Note: According to the Lex. 'Gezerî (from the Mesopotamian town of 'Geziret ibn 'Amr), the word wakihon is, in the Mesopotamian language, “the overseer of the house in which is the cross of the Christians;” and accordingly, in Muhammed's letter to the Christians of Negran, after they became subject to him, “a monk shall not be removed from his monastery, nor a presbyter from his presbyterate, (waḳâhtah) wala watah wakahyttah” (this will be the correct phrase), “nor an overseer from his office.” The verbal stem waḳ-ah (יָקַהּ) is, as it appears, Northern Semitic; the South Arabian lexicographer Neshwan ignores it (Wetzstein in Mühlau).)
the pious, either as taking care, εὐλαβής, or as keeping, i.e., observing, viz., that which is commanded by God.
In consequence of the accentuation, הַמַשָּׂא is the second designation of this string of proverbs, and is parallel with דברי. But that is absolutely impossible. משָּׂא (from נָשָׂא, to raise, viz., the voice, to begin to express) denotes the utterance, and according to the usage of the words before us, the divine utterance, the message of God revealed to the prophet and announced by him, for the most part, if not always (vid., at Isa 13:1), the message of God as the avenger. Accordingly Jewish interpreters (e.g., Meîri and Arama) remark that משׂא designates what follows, as דבר נְבוּאִיִּי, i.e., an utterance of the prophetic spirit. But, on the other hand, what follows begins with the confession of human weakness and short-sightedness; and, moreover, we read proverbs not of a divine but altogether of a human and even of a decaying spiritual stamp, besides distinguished from the Solomonic proverbs by this, that the I of the poet, which remains in the background, here comes to the front. This משׂא of prophetic utterances does not at all harmonize with the following string of proverbs. It does not so harmonize on this account, because one theme does not run through these proverbs which the sing. משׂא requires. It comes to this, that משׂא never occurs by itself in the sense of a divine, a solemn utterance, without having some more clearly defining addition, though it should be only a demonstrative הַזֶּה (Isa 14:28). But what author, whether poet or prophet, would give to his work the title of משׂא, which in itself means everything, and thus nothing! And now: the utterance - what can the article at all mean here? This question has remained unanswered by every interpreter. Ewald also sees himself constrained to clothe the naked word; he does it by reading together המשׂא נָאַם, and translating the “sublime saying which he spoke.” But apart from the consideration that Jer 23:31 proves nothing for the use of this use of נָאַם, the form (הגבר) נְאֻם is supported by 2Sa 23:1 (cf. Pro 30:5 with 2Sa 22:31); and besides, the omission of the אֲשֶׁר, and in addition of the relative pronoun (נְאָמוֹ), would be an inaccuracy not at all to be expected on the brow of this gnomology (vid., Hitzig). If we leave the altogether unsuspected נְאֻם undisturbed, המשׂא will be a nearer definition of the name of the author. The Midrash has a right suspicion, for it takes together Hamassa and Agur ben Jakeh, and explains: of Agur the son of Jakeh, who took upon himself the yoke of the most blessed. The Graecus Venetus comes nearer what is correct, for it translates: λόγοι Ἀγούρου υἱέως Ἰακέως τοῦ Μασάου. We connect Pro 31:1, where לְמוּאֵל מֶלֶךְ, “Lemuel (the) king,” is a linguistic impossibility, and thus, according to the accentuation lying before us, מֶלֶךְ מַשָּׂא also are to be connected together; thus it appears that משׂא must be the name of a country and a people. It was Hitzig who first made this Columbus-egg to stand. But this is the case only so far as he recognised in למואל מלך משׂא a Lemuel, the king of Massa, and recognised this Massa also in Pro 30:1 (vid., his dissertation: Das Königreich Massa [the kingdom of Massa], in Zeller's Theolog. Jahrbb. 1844, and his Comm.), viz., the Israelitish Massa named in Gen 25:14 (= 1Ch 1:30) along with Dumah and Tema. But he proceeds in a hair-splitting way, and with ingenious hypothesis, without any valid foundation. That this Dumah is the Dumat el-jendel (cf. under Isa 21:11) lying in the north of Nejed, near the southern frontiers of Syria, the name and the founding of which is referred by the Arabians to Dûm the son of Ishmael, must be regarded as possible, and consequently Massa is certainly to be sought in Northern Arabia. But if, on the ground of 1Ch 4:42., he finds there a Simeonitic kingdom, and finds its origin in this, that the tribe of Simeon originally belonging to the ten tribes, and thus coming from the north settled in the south of Judah, and from thence in the days of Hezekiah, fleeing before the Assyrians, were driven farther and farther in a south-east direction towards Northern Arabia; on the contrary, it has been shown by Graf (The Tribe of Simeon, a contribution to the history of Israel, 1866) that Simeon never settled in the north of the Holy Land, and according to existing evidences extended their settlement from Negeb partly into the Idumean highlands, but not into the highlands of North Arabia. Hitzig thinks that there are found traces of the Massa of Agur and Lemuel in the Jewish town
(Note: Cf. Blau's Arab. im sechsten Jahrh. in the Deutsch. Morgl. Zeits. xxxiii. 590, and also p. 573 of the same, regarding a family of proselytes among the Jews in Taima.)
of טילמאס, of Benjamin of Tudela, lying three days' journey from Chebar, and in the proper name (Arab.) Malsā (smooth), which is given to a rock between Tema and Wady el-Kora (vid., Kosegarten's Chestom. p. 143); but how notched his ingenuity here is need scarcely be shown. By means of more cautious combinations Mühlau has placed the residence of Agur and Lemuel in the Hauran mountain range, near which there is a Dumah, likewise a Têmâ; and in the name of the town Mismîje, lying in the Lejâ, is probably found the Mishma which is named along with Massa, Gen 25:14; and from this that is related in 1Ch 5:9., 1Ch 5:18-22, of warlike expeditions on the part of the tribes lying on the east of the Jordan against the Hagarenes and their allies Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab,
(Note: Mühlau combines Nodab with Nudêbe to the south-east of Bosra; Blau (Deut. Morg. Zeit. xxv. 566), with the Ναβδαῖοι of Eupolemos named along with the Ναβατοῖοι. The Kamûs has Nadab as the name of a tribe.)
it is with certainty concluded that in the Hauran, and in the wilderness which stretches behind the Euphrates towards it, Israelitish tribes have had their abode, whose territory had been early seized by the trans-Jordanic tribes, and was held “until the captivity,” 1Ch 5:22, i.e., till the Assyrian deportation. This designation of time is almost as unfavourable to Mühlau's theory of a Massa in the Hauran, inhabited by Israelitish tribes from the other side, as the expression “to Mount Seir” (1Ch 4:42) is to Hitzig's North Arabian Massa inhabited by Simeonites. We must leave it undecided whether Dumah and Têmâ, which the Toledoth of Ismael name in the neighbourhood of Massa, are the east Hauran districts now existing; or as Blau (Deut. Morgl. Zeit. xxv. 539), with Hitzig, supposes, North Arabian districts (cf. Genesis. p. 377, 4th ed.).
(Note: Dozy (Israeliten in Mecca, p. 89f.) connects Massa with Mansâh, a pretended old name of Mecca.)
“Be it as it may, the contents and the language of this difficult piece almost necessarily point to a region bordering on the Syro-Arabian waste. Ziegler's view (Neue Uebers. der Denksprüche Salomo's, 1791, p. 29), that Lemuel was probably an emir of an Arabian tribe in the east of Jordan, and that a wise Hebrew translated those proverbs of the emir into Hebrew, is certainly untenable, but does not depart so far from the end as may appear at the first glance” (Mühlau).
(Note: These German quotations with the name of Mühlau are taken from the additions to his book, which he placed at my disposal.)
If the text-punctuation lying before us rests on the false supposition that Massa, Pro 30:1; Pro 31:1, is a generic name, and not a proper name, then certainly the question arises whether משׂא should not be used instead of מַשָּׂא, much more מֵשָׂא, which is suggested as possible in the article “Sprüche,” in Herzog's Encycl. xiv. 694. Were מֵשָׁא, Gen 10:30, the region Μεσήνη, on the northern border of the Persian Gulf, in which Apamea lay, then it might be said in favour of this, that as the histories of Muhammed and of Benjamin of Tudela prove the existence of an old Jewish occupation of North Arabia, but without anything being heard of a מַשָּׂא, the Talmud bears testimony
(Note: Vid., Neubauer's Le Géographie du Talmud, pp. 325, 329, 382.)
to a Jewish occupation of Mesene, and particularly of Apamea; and by the mother of Lemuel, the king of Mesha, one may think
(Note: Derenbourg's Essai sur l'Hist. et la Géog. de la Palestine, i. p. 224.)
of Helena, celebrated in Jewish writings, queen of Adiabene, the mother of Monabaz and Izates. But the identity of the Mesha of the catalogue of nations with Μεσήνη is uncertain, and the Jewish population of that place dates at least from the time of the Sassanides to the period of the Babylonian exile. We therefore hold by the Ishmaelite Massa, whether North Arabian or Hauranian; but we by no means subscribe Mühlau's non possumus non negare, Agurum et Lemuëlem proseytos e paganis, non Israelitas fuisse. The religion of the tribes descended from Abraham, so far as it had not degenerated, was not to be regarded as idolatrous. It was the religion which exists to the present day among the great Ishmaelite tribes of the Syrian desert as the true tradition of their fathers under the name of Dîn Ibrâhîm (Abraham's religion); which, as from Wetzstein, we have noted in the Commentary on Job (p. 387 and elsewhere), continues along with Mosaism among the nomadic tribes of the wilderness; which shortly before the appearance of Christianity in the country beyond the Jordan, produced doctrines coming into contact with the teachings of the gospel; which at that very time, according to historic evidences (e.g., Mêjâsinî's chronicles of the Ka'be), was dominant even in the towns of Higâz; and in the second century after Christ, was for the first time during the repeated migration of the South Arabians again oppressed by Greek idolatry, and was confined to the wilderness; which gave the mightiest impulse to the rise of Islam, and furnished its best component part; and which towards the end of the last century, in the country of Neged, pressed to a reform of Islam, and had as a result the Wahabite doctrine. If we except Pro 30:5., the proverbs of Agur and Lemuel contain nothing which may not be conceived from a non-Israelitish standpoint on which the author of the Book of Job placed himself. Even Job 30:5. is not there (cf. Job 6:10; Job 23:12) without parallels. When one compares Deu 4:2; Deu 13:1, and 2Sa 22:31 = Psa 18:31 (from which Pro 30:5 of the proverbs of Agur is derived, with the change of יהוה into אֱלוֹהַּ), Agur certainly appears as one intimately acquainted with the revealed religion of Israel, and with their literature. But must we take the two Massites therefore, with Hitzig, Mühlau, and Zöckler, as born Israelites? Since the Bible history knows no Israelitish king outside of the Holy Land, we regard it as more probable that King Lemuel and his countryman Agur were Ishmaelites who had raised themselves above the religion of Abraham, and recognised the religion of Israel as its completion.
If we now return to the words of Pro 30:1, Hitzig makes Agur Lemuel's brother, for he vocalizes אָגוּר בִּן־יְקָהָהּ מַשָּׂא, i.e., Agur the son of her whom Massa obeys. Ripa and Björck of Sweden, and Stuart of America, adopt this view. But supposing that יָקַהּ is connected with the accusative of him who is obeyed, בן, as the representative of such an attributive clause, as of its virtual genitive, is elsewhere without example; and besides, it is unadvisable to explain away the proper name יָקֶה, which speaks for itself. There are two other possibilities of comprehending הַמַּשָּׁא, without the change, or with the change of a single letter. Wetzstein, on Pro 31:1, has said regarding Mühlau's translation “King of Massa:” “I would more cautiously translate, 'King of the Massans,' since this interpretation is unobjectionable; while, on the contrary, this is not terra Massa, nor urbs Massa. It is true that the inhabitants of Massa were not pure nomads, after 30 and 31, but probably, like the other tribes of Israel, they were half nomads, who possessed no great land as exclusive property, and whose chief place did not perhaps bear their name. The latter may then have been as rare in ancient times as it is in the present day. Neither the Sammar, the Harb, the Muntefik, nor other half nomads whom I know in the southern parts of the Syrian desert, have any place which bears their name. So also, it appears, the people of Uz (עוץ), which we were constrained to think of as a dominant, firmly-settled race, since it had so great a husbandman as Job, possessed no קִרְיַת עוּץ. Only in certain cases, where a tribe resided for many centuries in and around a place, does the name of this tribe appear to have remained attached to it. Thus from גוּף דּוּמָה, 'the low-country of the Dumahns,' or קִרְיַת דּוּמָה, 'the city of Dumahns,' as also from קִרְיַת תֵּימָא, 'the city of the Temans,' gradually there arose (probably not till the decline and fall of this tribe) a city of Dumah, a haven of Midian, and the like, so that the primary meaning of the name came to be lost.” It is clear that, from the existence of an Ishmaelite tribe מַשָּׂא, there does not necessarily follow a similar name given to a region. The conj. מִמַּשָּׂא, for הַמַשָּׂא (vid., Herzog's Encycl. xiv. 702), has this against it, that although it is good Heb., it directly leads to this conclusion (e.g., 2Sa 23:20, 2Sa 23:29, cf. 1Ki 17:1). Less objectionable is Bunsen's and Böttcher's הַמַּשָּׂאִי. But perhaps המשׂא may also have the same signification; far rather at least this than that which Malbim, after הַשַּׂר הַמַשָּׂא, 1Ch 15:27, introduced with the lxx ἄρχων τῶν ᾠδῶν: “We ought then to compare 2Sa 23:24, דודו בֵּית לָחֶֽם, a connection in which, after the analogy of such Arabic connections as ḳaysu'aylana, Kais of the tribe of 'Ailân (Ibn Coteiba, 13 and 83), or Ma'nu Ṭayyin, Ma'n of the tribe of Tay, i.e., Ma'n belonging to this tribe, as distinguished from other men and families of this name (Schol. Hamasae 144. 3), בית לחם is thought of as genit”
(Note: In 'העם וגו, Jer 8:5, 'ירושׁ is though of as genit., although it may be also nom., after the scheme of apposition instead of annexion. That it is genit., cf. Philippi's St. Const. pp. 192-195.)
(Mühlau). That בית לחם (instead of בֵּית הַלַּחְמִי) is easily changed, with Thenius and Wellhausen, after 1Ch 11:26, into מִבֵּית לחם, and in itself it is not altogether homogeneous, because without the article. Yet it may be supposed that instead of משׂא, on account of the appelat. of the proper name (the lifting up, elatio), the word המשׂא might be also employed. And since בן־יקה, along with אגור, forms, as it were, one compositum, and does not at all destroy
(Note: We say, in Arab., without any anomaly, e.g., Alı̂ju-bnu-Muḥammadin Tajjiïn, i.e., the Ali son of Muhammed, of the tribe (from the tribe) of Tay; cf. Jos 3:11; Isa 28:1; Isa 63:11; and Deu 3:13.)
the regulating force of אגור, the expression is certainly, after the Arabic usus loq., to be thus explained: The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, of the tribe (the country) of Massa.
The second line of this verse, as it is punctuated, is to be rendered:
The saying of the man to Ithîel, to Ithîel and Uchal,
not Ukkal; for, since Athias and van der Hooght, the incorrect form וְאֻכָּל has become current. J. H. Michaelis has the right form of the word וְאֻכָל. Thus, with כ raphatum, it is to be read after the Masora, for it adds to this word the remark לית וחסר, and counts it among the forty-eight words sometimes written defectively without ו (vid., this list in the Masora finalis, 27b, Col); and since it only remarks the absence of the letter lengthening the word where no dagesh follows the vocal, it thus supposes that the כ has no dagesh, as it is also found in Codd. (also Jaman.) written with the Raphe. לְאִיתִיאֵל is doubly accentuated; the Tarcha represents the Metheg, after the rule Thorath Emeth, p. 11. The ל after נְאֻם is, in the sense of the punctuation, the same dat. as in לַאדֹנִי, Psa 110:1, and has an apparent right in him who asks כִּי תֵדָע in the 4th verse. Ithîel and Uchal must be, after an old opinion, sons, or disciples, or contemporaries, of Agur. Thus, e.g., Gesenius, in his Lex. under אִיתִיאֵל, where as yet his reference to Neh 11:7 is wanting. איתיאל is rendered by Jefet and other Karaites, “there is a God” = אִיתַי אֵל; but it is perhaps equivalent to אִתִּי אֵל, “God is with me;” as for אִתַּי rof sa ”;e, the form אִיתַי is also found. אֻכָל (אֻכַל) nowhere occurs as a proper name; but in the region of proper names, everything, or almost everything, is possible.
(Note: Vid., Wetzstein's Inschriften aus den Trachonen und dem Haurangebirge (1864), p. 336f.)
Ewald sees in 1b-14 a dialogue: in Pro 30:2-4 the הַגֶּבֶר, i.e., as the word appears to him, the rich, haughty mocker, who has worn out his life, speaks; and in Pro 30:5-14 the “Mitmirgott” [= God with me], or, more fully, “Mitmirgott-sobinichstark” [= God with me, so am I strong], i.e., the pious, humble man answers. “The whole,” he remarks, “is nothing but poetical; and it is poetical also that this discourse of mockery is called an elevated strain.” But (1) גֶּבֶר is a harmless word; and in נְאֻם הַגֶּבֶר, Num 24:3, Num 24:15; 2Sa 23:1, it is a solemn, earnest one; (2) a proper name, consisting of two clauses connected by Vav, no matter whether it be an actual or a symbolical name, is not capable of being authenticated; Ewald, §274b, recognises in 'גִּדַּלְתִּי וגו, 1Ch 25:4, the naming, not of one son of Heman, but of two; and (3) it would be a very forced, inferior poetry if the poet placed one half of the name in one line, and then, as if constrained to take a new breath, gave the other half of it in a second line. But, on the other hand, that איתיאל and אכל are the names of two different persons, to whom the address of the man is directed, is attested by the, in this case aimless, anadiplosis, the here unpoetical parallelism with reservation. The repetition, as Fleischer remarks, of the name Ithîel, which may rank with Uchal, as the son or disciple of Agur, has probably its reason only as this, that one placed a second more extended phrase simply along with the shorter. The case is different; but Fleischer's supposition, that the poet himself cannot have thus written, is correct. We must not strike out either of the two לאיתיאל; but the supposed proper names must be changed as to their vocalization into a declaratory clause. A principal argument lies in Pro 30:2, beginning with כִּי: this כי supposes a clause which it established; for, with right, Mühlau maintains that כי, in the affirmative sense, which, by means of aposiopesis, proceeds from the confirmative, may open the conclusion and enter as confirmatory into the middle of the discourse (e.g., Isa 32:13), but cannot stand abruptly at the commencement of a discourse (cf. under Isa 15:1 and Isa 7:9). But if we now ask how it is to be vocalized, there comes at the same time into the sphere of investigation the striking phrase נאם הַגֶּבֶר. This phrase all the Greek interpreters attest by their rendering, τάδε λέγει ὁ ἀνήρ (Venet. φησὶν ἀνήρ); besides, this is to be brought forward from the wilderness of the old attempts at a translation, that the feeling of the translators strives against the recognition in ואכל of a second personal name: the Peshito omits it; the Targ. translates it, after the Midrash, by וְאוּכָל (I may do it); as Theodotion, καὶ δυνήσομαι, which is probably also meant by the καὶ συνήσομαι (from συνείναι, to be acquainted with) of the Venet.; the lxx with καὶ παύομαι; and Aquila, καὶ τέλεσον (both from the verb כלה). As an objection to נאם הגבר is this, that it is so bald without being followed, as at Num 24:3, Num 24:15; 2Sa 23:1, with the attributive description of the man. Luther was determined thereby to translate: discourse of the man Leithiel.... And why could not לְאִיתִיאֵל be a proper-name connection like שְׁאַלְתִּיאֵל (שַׁלְתִּיאֵל)? Interpreted in the sense of “I am troubled concerning God,” is might be a symbolical name of the φιλόσοφος, as of one who strives after the knowledge of divine things with all his strength. But (1) לָאָה, with the accus. obj., is not established, and one is rather inclined to think of a name such as כְּלִיתִיאֵל, after Psa 84:3; (2) moreover, לאיתיאל cannot be at one time a personal name, and at another time a declarative sentence - one must both times transform it into לָאִיתִי אֵל; but אֵל has to be taken as a vocative, not as accus., as is done by J. D. Michaelis, Hitzig, Bunsen, Zöckler, and others, thus: I have wearied myself, O God!... The nakedness of הגבר is accordingly not covered by the first Leithiel. Mühlau, in his work, seeks to introduce המשׂא changed into ממשׂא: “The man from Massa,” and prefers to interpret הגבר generically:
(Note: Thus, viz., that הגבר denotes, not the man as he ought to be, but the man as he usually is (the article, as the Arabic grammarians say, “not for the exhaustion of the characteristic marks of the genus,” but for the expression of “the quality mâhîje of the genus”).)
“proverb (confession) of the man (i.e., the man must confess): I have wearied myself, O God!...” Nothing else in reality remains. The article may also be retrospective: the man just now named, whose “words” are announced, viz., Agur. But why was not the expression נאם אגור then used? Because it is not poetical to say: “the (previously named) man.” On the other hand, what follows applies so that one may understand, under הגבר, any man you choose. There are certainly among men more than too many who inquire not after God (Psa 14:2.). But there are also not wanting those who feel sorrowfully the distance between them and God. Agur introduces such a man as speaking, for he generalizes his own experience. Psa 36:2 (vid., under this passage) shows that a proper name does not necessarily follow נאם. With נאם הגבר Agur then introduces what the man has to confess - viz. a man earnestly devoted to God; for with נאם the ideas of that which comes from the heart and the solemnly earnest are connected. If Agur so far generalizes his own experience, the passionate anadiplosis does not disturb this. After long contemplation of the man, he must finally confess: I have troubled myself, O God! I have troubled myself, O God!... That the trouble was directed toward God is perhaps denoted by the alliteration of לאיתי with אל. But what now, further? ואכל is read as וְאֻכָל, וָאֻכָל, וָֽאֲכַל, וְאֵכֶל, וָאֵכֶל, and it has also been read as וָאֵכַל. The reading וָאֻכָל no one advocates; this that follows says the direct contrary, et potui (pollui). Geiger (Urschrift, p. 61) supports the reading וְאֻכָל, for he renders it interrogatively: “I wearied myself in vain about God, I wearied myself in vain about God; why should I be able to do it?” But since one may twist any affirmative clause in this way, and from a yes make a no, one should only, in cases of extreme necessity, consent to such a question in the absence of an interrogative word. Böttcher's לָאִיתִי אַל, I have wearied myself out in vain, is not Hebrew. But at any rate the expression might be אַל־אֻכָל, if only the Vav did not stand between the words! If one might transpose the letters, then we might gain וְלֹא אֻכָל, according to which the lxx translates: οὐ δυνήσομαι. At all events, this despairing as to the consequence of further trouble, “I shall be able to do nothing (shall bring it to nothing),” would be better than וְאֵכֶל (and I shall withdraw - become faint), for which, besides, וְאֶכְלֶה should be used (cf. Pro 22:8 with Job 33:21). One expects, after לאיתי, the expression of that which is the consequence of earnest and long-continued endeavour. Accordingly Hitzig reads וָאֵכַל, and I have become dull - suitable to the sense, but unsatisfactory on this account, because כָּלַל, in the sense of the Arab. kall, hebescere, is foreign to the Heb. usus loq. Thus ואכל will be a fut. consec. of כלה. J. D. Michaelis, and finally Böttcher, read it as fut. consec. Piel וַֽאֲכל or וַֽאֲכָל (vid., regarding this form in pause under Pro 25:9), “and I have made an end;” but it is not appropriate to the inquirer here complaining, when dissatisfaction with his results had determined him to abandon his research, and let himself be no more troubled. We therefore prefer to read with Dahler, and, finally, with Mühlau and Zöckler, וָאֵכֶל, and I have withdrawn. The form understood by Hitzig as a pausal form is, in the unchangeableness of its vocals, as accordant with rule as those of יָחַד, Pro 27:17, which lengthen the a of their first syllables in pause. And if Hitzig objects that too much is said, for one of such meditation does not depart, we answer, that if the inquiry of the man who speaks here has completed itself by the longing of his spirit and his soul (Psa 84:3; Psa 143:7), he might also say of himself, in person, כָלִיתִי or וָאֵכֶל. An inquiry proceeding not merely from intellectual, but, before all, from practical necessity, is meant - the doubled לאיתי means that he applied thereto the whole strength of his inner and his outer man; and ואכל, that he nevertheless did not reach his end, but wearied himself in vain. By this explanation which we give to 1a, no change of its accents is required; but 1b has to be written:
נְאֻם הַגֶּבֶר לָאִיתִי אֵל
לָאִיתִי אֵל וָאֵֽכֶל
(Note: The Munach is the transformation of Mugrash, and this sequence of accents - Tarcha, Munach, Silluk - remains the same, whether we regard אל as the accusative or as the vocative.)