What Does Proverbs 30:7 Mean?
Two things I ask of you; do not hold them back from me before I die.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:THE KEY
The speaker places a plea against the boundary of death: what is asked must not be withheld before life ends.
THE MEANING
Two things are asked of God, and the speaker pleads that neither be withheld before death. The requests remain unnamed here, so the urgency arrives before their content: need and the finite time around it stand together.
THE ROOT
שָׁאַלְתִּי
sha'alti
GROWS FROM
שאל
sha'al
To ask, inquire, or request.
“ask” in this verse is sha'alti. The verb names a request voiced toward another, while the speaker also names withholding as the feared response. Its noun branches carry asking into petition and request, linking the speaker’s voice to the answer sought.
ALSO GROWS
she'elah: A question, petition, or request.
שְׁאֵלָה
It names a request brought before a hearer, echoing the speaker’s appeal for two things.
mish'al: A petition or requested thing.
מִשְׁאָל
It carries the act of asking into what is sought, illuminating the speaker’s unnamed requests.
THE PATTERN
A need becomes a spoken request directed toward the one from whom an answer can come.
Ask of me, and I give you the nations for your inheritance, and the far edges of the earth as what your hands grasp.Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.But if any of you is left behind in wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all without doubling and without taunting, and it will be given him.THE THREAD
Ask of me, and I give you the nations for your inheritance, and the far edges of the earth as what your hands grasp.The same root שאל (sha’al, “ask” or “request”) appears here as a plea and there as an invitation to ask. Both place the request in direct relation to the one who can answer.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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