Remove far from me vanity and lies -
From the import of the original, I am satisfied that Agur prays against idolatry, false religion, and false worship of every kind. שוא shau is used for an idol, a false god. Jeremiah 18:15; : "My people have forsaken me; they have burnt incense to Vanity;" לשוא lashshav, "to an Idol." Psalm 31:6; : "I have hated them that regard lying Vanities;" שוא הבלי habley shave, "vain Idols." See also Hosea 12:11; Jonah 2:8. And כזב cazab, a thing that fails or deceives, may well apply to the vain pretensions, false promises, and deceptive religious rites of idolatry. So Jeremiah 15:18; : "Wilt thou be unto me as a liar," אכזב כמו kemo achzob, like the false, failing promises of the false gods; "and as waters that fail;" נאמנו לא lo neemanu, that are not faithful; not like the true God, whose promises never fail. According to this view of the subject, Agur prays,
Here are three requests:
3. The third request is, Feed me with food convenient for me, חקי לחם הטריפני hatripheni leechem chukki ; the meaning of which is, "give me as prey my statute allowance of bread," i.e., my daily bread, a sufficient portion for each day. There is an allusion made to hunting: "Direct so by thy good providence, that I may each day find sufficient portion to subsist on, as a hunter in the forest prays that he may have good speed." It is the province of a preacher to show the importance and utility of such a prayer, and dilate the circumstances, and expand the reasons, after the commentator has shown the literal sense.
The order of the two requests is significant. The wise man‘s prayer is first and chiefly, “truth in the inward parts,” the removal of all forms of falsehood, hollowness, hypocrisy.
Neither poverty - The evil of the opposite extremes of social life is that in different ways they lead men to a false standard of duty, and so to that forgetfulness of God which passes into an absolute denial.
Food convenient for me - literally, “give me for food the bread of my appointed portion.” The prayer foreshadows that which we have been taught by the Divine Wisdom: “Give us, day by day, our daily bread.”
I saw that we should pray as Solomon did—“Feed me with food convenient for me” (Proverbs 30:8)—and as we make the prayer, act it out. Get food that is plain and that is essential to health, free from grease. Such food will be convenient for us. 3SM 274.5
Read in context »