The authors of the last two chapters of Proverbs, Agur and Lemuel, are known only from their writing here. While many Biblical authors were prominent figures, including Solomon, we recognize that some were obscure people, and a few are even completely unknown to us. That doesn’t mean that what they wrote is any less significant for us today, since every one of them was inspired by the Holy Spirit. It does raise some questions for us as to who they were, why their writings were preserved (aside from divine preservation), and what their historical and life situations might have been.
We learn the name of Agur’s father and of his intended audience. (The Hebrew of Proverbs 30:1 might be names of people or descriptions of the writing, so we aren’t sure if it was written to one person or two.) Lemuel is a king, but his kingdom is not named. (It is possible Lemuel is an alternate name for Solomon, but that is by no means certain.) In either case, we have authors who may well have been known to their original audiences but are not known to us. We don’t even know if they were Israelites or if their wisdom was collected by Solomon or someone else and found useful enough to add to the book of Proverbs.
This leads us to one of the burning questions of determining the canon of Scripture. The word canon comes from the Greek word kanon, which means rule. The canon of the Bible is those works that match a rule to be included in the official, recognized set of books. This is a very broad subject, with many considerations and an extended history of the recognition of the canon. Here I want to discuss just one of these considerations, authorship.
The writers of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but each one was a human being with their own style and use of language. The Old Testament was written over a period of about one thousand years, so the Hebrew language changed in style and usage over that time. (A small section of Daniel is written in Aramaic, a related language, as well.) The form of the language helps us determine approximately when a passage was written. If we know who the author was, that also places a book or passage in its historical period.
The first 29 chapters of Proverbs were written by Solomon, so they were written somewhere around 970-930 BCE. These last two chapters have unknown authors, so we can’t be as certain about when they were written. Unless Lemuel is Solomon, however, both were probably known to Solomon and to those who preserved his proverbs, which is why they are included here. That probably puts their composition around the same time as Solomon’s writings, which was a prime period for wisdom literature.
So, given all this uncertainty, how did Proverbs 30-31 end up as part of the Bible? The Jews included Proverbs as we have it from very close to its writing, and it was included in the debate over which books were part of the canon that concluded shortly after Jesus’ lifetime. The scholars who officially recognized the Scriptures accepted all of Proverbs as part of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit, superintending the process, ensured that they would know which writings had the “mark” of the Lord on them. This was the Bible of the Jews and of the early church and remains part of the Christian Scriptures today. Whether an author was famous or unknown, the words that God wanted in His Word were preserved for the use of His people up to today.
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