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30The words of Agur son of Jakeh. An oracle.

Thus says the man: I am weary, O God,
I am weary, O God. How can I prevail?
²Surely I am too stupid to be human;
I do not have human understanding.
³I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the holy ones.
⁴Who has ascended to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered the wind in the hollow of the hand?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is the person’s name?
And what is the name of the person’s child?
Surely you know! ²⁴Four things on earth are small,
yet they are exceedingly wise:
²⁵the ants are a people without strength,
yet they provide their food in the summer;
²⁶the badgers are a people without power,
yet they make their homes in the rocks;
²⁷the locusts have no king,
yet all of them march in rank;
²⁸the lizard can be grasped in the hand,
yet it is found in kings’ palaces. ²⁹Three things are stately in their stride;
four are stately in their gait:
³⁰the lion, which is mightiest among wild animals
and does not turn back before any;
³¹the strutting rooster, the he-goat,
and a king striding before his people. ³²If you have been foolish, exalting yourself,
or if you have been devising evil,
put your hand on your mouth.
³³For as pressing milk produces curds,
and pressing the nose produces blood,
so pressing anger produces strife.

3Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard. ²Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! ³For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh—

⁴even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. ⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.