Albert Barnes Commentary Proverbs 30

See the introduction to Proverbs. According to the different reading, as noted there, the inscription ends with: the man spake, and the words that follow are the beginning of the confession, I have wearied myself after God and have fainted.

Spake - The Hebrew word is commonly used for the utterance of a divine oracle.

A confession of ignorance; compare with it the saying of Socrates that he was wise only insofar as he knew that he knew nothing, or that of Asaph (Psalms 73:22).

He found, when he looked within, that all his learning was as nothing. He had heard of God only by the hearing of the ear (Job 42:5), and now he discovered how little that availed.

The holy—The Holy One. Compare Proverbs 9:10.

Man is to be humbled to the dust by the thought of the glory of God as seen in the visible creation.

Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?—The thought is obviously that of the all-embracing Providence of God, taking in at once the greatest and the least, the highest and the lowest. The mysteries of the winds and of the waters baffle human inquiry.

What is his son’s name?—The primary thought is that man knows so little of the divine nature that he cannot tell whether he may transfer to it the human relationships with which he is familiar, or must rest in the thought of a unity indivisible and incommunicable. If there is such an Only-begotten of the Father , then His nature, until revealed, must be as incomprehensible by us as that of the Father Himself.

Out of this consciousness of the impotence of all humanity's efforts in pursuit of the knowledge of God arises the sense of the preciousness of every living word that God Himself has revealed, whether through “the Law and the prophets” or through “wise men and scribes.”