Job 26:14

26:14 Indeed, these are but the outer fringes of his ways! ¹ 

How faint is the whisper ²  we hear of him!

But who can understand the thunder of his power?”

Job 28:20-21

God Alone Has Wisdom

28:20 “But wisdom – where does it come from? ³ 

Where is the place of understanding?

28:21 For ⁴  it has been hidden

from the eyes of every living creature,

and from the birds of the sky it has been concealed.

Job 38:2

38:2 “Who is this ⁵  who darkens counsel ⁶ 

with words without knowledge?

Job 42:3

42:3 you asked, ⁷ 

‘Who is this who darkens counsel

without knowledge?’

But ⁸  I have declared without understanding ⁹ 

things too wonderful for me to know. ¹⁰ 

Psalms 73:16-17

73:16 When I tried to make sense of this,

it was troubling to me. ¹¹ 

73:17 Then I entered the precincts of God’s temple, ¹² 

and understood the destiny of the wicked. ¹³ 

Psalms 73:22

73:22 I was ignorant ¹⁴  and lacked insight; ¹⁵ 

I was as senseless as an animal before you. ¹⁶ 

Psalms 139:6

139:6 Your knowledge is beyond my comprehension;

it is so far beyond me, I am unable to fathom it. ¹⁷ 

Proverbs 30:2-4

30:2 Surely ¹⁸  I am more brutish ¹⁹  than any other human being, ²⁰ 

and I do not have human understanding; ²¹ 

30:3 I have not learned wisdom,

nor do I have knowledge ²²  of the Holy One. ²³ 

30:4 Who has ascended into heaven, and then descended? ²⁴ 

Who has gathered up the winds in his fists? ²⁵ 

Who has bound up the waters in his cloak? ²⁶ 

Who has established all the ends of the earth? ²⁷ 

What is his name, and what is his son’s name? ²⁸  – if you know!

Proverbs 30:1

The Words of Agur ²⁹ 

30:1 The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh; an oracle: ³⁰ 

This ³¹  man says ³²  to Ithiel, to Ithiel and to Ukal: ³³ 

Colossians 1:12

1:12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share ³⁴  in the saints’ ³⁵  inheritance in the light.

Colossians 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, ³⁶  an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

Colossians 3:2

3:2 Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth,

[26:14]  ¹ tn Heb “the ends of his ways,” meaning “the fringes.”

[26:14]  ² tn Heb “how little is the word.” Here “little” means a “fraction” or an “echo.”

[28:20]  ³ tn The refrain is repeated, except now the verb is תָּבוֹא (tavo’, “come”).

[28:21]  ⁴ tn The vav on the verb is unexpressed in the LXX. It should not be overlooked, for it introduces a subordinate clause of condition (R. Gordis, Job, 310).

[38:2]  ⁵ tn The demonstrative pronoun is used here to emphasize the interrogative pronoun (see GKC 442 §136.c).

[38:2]  ⁶ sn The referent of “counsel” here is not the debate between Job and the friends, but the purposes of God (see Ps 33:10; Prov 19:21; Isa 19:17). Dhorme translates it “Providence.”

[42:3]  ⁷ tn The expression “you asked” is added here to clarify the presence of the line to follow. Many commentators delete it as a gloss from Job 38:2. If it is retained, then Job has to be recalling God’s question before he answers it.

[42:3]  ⁸ tn The word לָכֵן (lakhen) is simply “but,” as in Job 31:37.

[42:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “and I do not understand.” The expression serves here in an adverbial capacity. It also could be subordinated as a complement: “I have declared [things that] I do not understand.”

[42:3]  ¹⁰ tn The last clause is “and I do not know.” This is also subordinated to become a dependent clause.

[73:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and [when] I pondered to understand this, troubling it [was] in my eyes.”

[73:17]  ¹² tn The plural of the term מִקְדָּשׁ (miqdash) probably refers to the temple precincts (see Ps 68:35; Jer 51:51).

[73:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “I discerned their end.” At the temple the psalmist perhaps received an oracle of deliverance announcing his vindication and the demise of the wicked (see Ps 12) or heard songs of confidence (for example, Ps 11), wisdom psalms (for example, Pss 1, 37), and hymns (for example, Ps 112) that describe the eventual downfall of the proud and wealthy.

[73:22]  ¹⁴ tn Or “brutish, stupid.”

[73:22]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and I was not knowing.”

[73:22]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “an animal I was with you.”

[139:6]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “too amazing [is this] knowledge for me, it is elevated, I cannot attain to it.”

[30:2]  ¹⁸ tn The particle כִּי (ki) functions in an asseverative sense, “surely; indeed; truly” (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 73, §449).

[30:2]  ¹⁹ tn The noun בַּעַר (ba’ar) means “brutishness”; here it functions as a predicate adjective. It is followed by מֵאִישׁ (me’ish) expressing comparative degree: “more than a man” or “more than any man,” with “man” used in a generic sense. He is saying that he has fallen beneath the level of mankind. Cf. NRSV “I am too stupid to be human.”

[30:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “than man.” The verse is using hyperbole; this individual feels as if he has no intelligence at all, that he is more brutish than any other human. Of course this is not true, or he would not be able to speculate on the God of the universe at all.

[30:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “the understanding of a man,” with “man” used attributively here.

[30:3]  ²² sn The construction uses repetition to make the point emphatically: “I do not know the knowledge of the Holy One.” Agur’s claim to being “brutish” is here clarified – he is not one of those who has knowledge or understanding of God. C. H. Toy thinks the speaker is being sarcastic in reference to others who may have claimed such knowledge (Proverbs [ICC], 521).

[30:3]  ²³ tn The epithet “the Holy One” is the adjective “holy” put in the masculine plural (as in 9:10). This will harmonize with the plural of majesty used to explain the plural with titles for God. However, NRSV takes the plural as a reference to the “holy ones,” presumably referring to angelic beings.

[30:4]  ²⁴ sn To make his point Agur includes five questions. These, like Job 38–41, or Proverbs 8:24-29, focus on the divine acts to show that it is absurd for a mere mortal to think that he can explain God’s work or compare himself to God. These questions display mankind’s limitations and God’s incomparable nature. The first question could be open to include humans, but may refer to God alone (as the other questions do).

[30:4]  ²⁵ sn The questions are filled with anthropomorphic language. The questioner is asking what humans have ever done this, but the meaning is that only God has done this. “Gathering the wind in his fists” is a way of expressing absolute sovereign control over the forces of nature.

[30:4]  ²⁶ sn The question is comparing the clouds of the heavens to garments (e.g., Job 26:8). T. T. Perowne writes, “Men bind up water in skins or bottles; God binds up the rain-floods in the thin, gauzy texture of the changing clouds, which yet by his power does not rend under its burden of waters.”

[30:4]  ²⁷ sn The ends of the earth is an expression often used in scripture as a metonymy of subject referring to the people who live in the ends of the earth, the far off and remote lands and islands. While that is possible here as well, this may simply be a synecdoche saying that God created the whole world, even the most remote and distant places.

[30:4]  ²⁸ sn The reference to “son” in this passage has prompted many suggestions down through the years: It was identified as Israel in the Jewish Midrashim, the Logos or demiurge by some of the philosophers and allegorical writers, as simple poetic parallelism without a separate identity by some critical scholars, and as Jesus by Christian commentators. Parallels with Ugaritic are interesting, because Baal is referred to as a son; but that is bound up within the pantheon where there was a father god. Some of the Jewish commentators exhibit a strange logic in expressing what Christians would say is only their blindness to the full revelation: There is little cogency in this being a reference to Jesus because if there had been such a person at any time in the past he would have left some tradition about it through his descendants (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 317). But Judaism has taught from the earliest times that Messiah was preexistent (especially in view of Micah 5 and Daniel 7); and the claims of Jesus in the Gospels bear this out. It seems best to say that there is a hint here of the nature of the Messiah as Son, a hint that will later be revealed in full through the incarnation.

[30:1]  ²⁹ sn This chapter has a title (30:1), Agur’s confession and petition (30:2-9), and a series of Agur’s admonitions (30:10-33).

[30:1]  ³⁰ tn The title הַמַּשָּׂא (hammasa’) means “the burden,” a frequently used title in prophetic oracles. It may be that the word is a place name, although it is more likely that it describes what follows as an important revelation.

[30:1]  ³¹ tn The definite article is used here as a demonstrative, clarifying the reference to Agur.

[30:1]  ³² sn The word translated “says” (נְאֻם, nÿ’um) is a verbal noun; it is also a term that describes an oracle. It is usually followed by the subjective genitive: “the oracle of this man to Ithiel.”

[30:1]  ³³ tn There have been numerous attempts to reinterpret the first two verses of the chapter. The Greek version translated the names “Ithiel” and “Ukal,” resulting in “I am weary, O God, I am weary and faint” (C. C. Torrey, “Proverbs Chapter 30,” JBL 73 [1954]: 93-96). The LXX’s approach is followed by some English versions (e.g., NRSV, NLT). The Midrash tried through a clever etymologizing translation to attribute the works to Solomon (explained by W. G. Plaut, Proverbs, 299). It is most likely that someone other than Solomon wrote these sayings; they have a different, almost non-proverbial, tone to them. See P. Franklyn, “The Sayings of Agur in Proverbs 30: Piety or Skepticism,” ZAW 95 (1983): 239-52.

[1:12]  ³⁴ tn BDAG 473 s.v. ἱκανόω states, “τινὰ εἴς τι someone for someth. Col 1:12.” The point of the text is that God has qualified the saints for a “share” or “portion” in the inheritance of the saints.

[1:12]  ³⁵ tn Grk “the inheritance of the saints.” The genitive noun τῶν ἁγίων (twn Jagiwn) is a possessive genitive: “the saints’ inheritance.”

[1:1]  ³⁶ tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.