Proverbs 30:8

Study note

Setting — Agur addresses God in a prayer framed as two requests made before death (Proverbs 30:7). The moment is one of deliberate self-limitation, not general piety.

The words — שָׁוְא (shav') elsewhere means "vanity" or "emptiness"; here it is paired with כָּזָב (kaZav, "falsehood") to name the moral corruption the speaker fears. The antithesis רֵשׁ / עֹשֶׁר (resh / 'o.sher, "poverty" / "wealth") structures the second half as a deliberate middle.

The thread — The contentment thread runs through 1 Timothy 6:6 ("godliness with contentment is great gain") and Psalms 119:37 (turning eyes from "worthless things"). Psalms 62:9 reinforces the shav' thread by weighing the proud and lowborn alike as vapor.

Why it lands — The prayer names two concrete failure modes: pride born of surplus and theft born of deficit. It asks the reader to see contentment not as a passive virtue but as a boundary to request actively.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.