Agur

Agur ben Jakeh (Hebrew: אגור בן יקה‎) was the compiler of a collection of proverbs found in Proverbs 30, which is sometimes known as the Book of Agur or Sayings of Agur. The initial text of the chapter runs as follows (JPS translation), and bears great similarity to Isaiah 40:12-14. This translation is not universally accepted as correct; see below.

The text (ver. 1) seems to say that he was a "Massaite," the gentilic termination not being indicated in the traditional writing "Ha-Massa." This place has been identified by some Assyriologists with the land of Mash, a district between Judea and Babylonia, and the traces of nomadic or seminomadic life and thought found in Gen. 31and 32 give some support to the hypothesis. Heinrich Graetz, followed by Bickell and Cheyne, conjectures that the original reading is המשל ("Ha-Moshel," = "the collector of proverbs"). The true explanation is still uncertain.

In rabbinical literature

"Agur," and the enigmatical names and words which follow in Prov. 30:1, are interpreted by the Aggadah as epithets of Solomon, playing upon the words as follows: "Agur" denotes "the compiler; the one who first gathered maxims together." "The son of Jakeh" denotes "the one who spat out," that is, "despised" (from קוא, "to spit"), le-Ithiel, "the words of God" (ot, "word"; El, "God"), exclaiming, "I can [ukal] transgress the law against marrying many wives without fear of being misled by them."

Jacob ben Judah Landau

Jacob ben Judah Landau (died 1493) (Hebrew: יעקב ברוך בן יהודה לנדא‎) was a German-Italian rabbi and halakhic codifier

Biography

Landau lived in the second half of the 15th century. His father was one of the chief authorities on the Talmud in Germany; hundreds of Talmudists, among them naturally his son, were his pupils. Landau left Germany and settled in Italy, living first in Pavia (1480) and then in Naples (1487).

Works

In Naples, some time between 1487 and 1492, he published his code "Agur." He composed this for his pupil Ezra Abraham b. David Obadiah, because, the latter's time being devoted to physics and metaphysics, he could not enter deeply into the study of the Talmud (see introduction to Agur). This practical consideration determined the form of the Agur, which contains only those rules that a layman should know, and comprises principally an abridged presentation of the material treated in the first and second parts of the Turim. The author of the Turim, Jacob ben Asher, is Landau's chief authority, and the Agur may be considered really as a supplement to that work. In the Agur, Landau gives excerpts from the halakhic literature which appeared after the time of Jacob ben Asher.