Jakeh

Ja’keh. (pious). See Proverbs, The Book of.

Related to Hebrew yikkah, "obedience." Father of Agur. (See AGUR.) Hitzig translated Pro 30:1, with a conjectural reading, "son of her whose obedience is Masse," i.e. the queen of Masse! (Gen 25:14; 1Ch 1:30; 1Ch 4:41-43). Thus Agur and Lemuel are brothers (Pro 31:1), sons of the queen of Masse in Arabia, the region which he conjectures the Simeonites conquered in Hezekiah’s time. Bunsen makes Jakeh a proper name, "son of Jakeh the man of Massa."

[Ja’keh]

Father of Agur, whose ’words’ are in Proverbs 30.

JAKEH.—Father of Agur, the author of the proverbs contained in Pro 30:1-33.

jā´ke (יקה, yāḳeh, perhaps from Arabic root meaning “carefully religious”; יקא, yāḳē’, as if from קיא, ḳı̄’): The father of Agur, the author of the sayings recorded in Pro 30:1. Nothing is known of either Jakeh or Agur. The immediate connection in the Hebrew text of ha-massā’, “the prophecy” or “burden” (the King James Version “even the prophecy,” the Revised Version (British and American) “the oracle”) with n^e’um, “oracle” (the King James Version “spake,” the Revised Version (British and American) “saith”) is quite exceptional, while the verse is unintelligible and the text, as the Septuagint shows, is evidently corrupt. The best emendation is that which changes ha-massā’, “the prophecy,” into ha-massā’ı̄, “the Massaite,” or into mimmassā’, “of Massa” (Revised Version margin), Massa being the name of the country of an Ishmaelite tribe (compare Gen 25:14; 1Ch 1:30; Pro 31:1 the Revised Version margin). See AGUR.