Proverbs 30:15 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The horse-leach hath two daughters— This passage seems in my judgment, says Bishop Patrick, to be an answer to some such question as this (which the scholars had propounded to Agur, after the manner of enigmatical discourses), What is most unsatiable? which he chooses to give an account of in this place, the better to represent the nature of those wicked men of whom he had spoken before; especially the two last, the proud and the tyrannical, or extortioner; whose desires are a gulph which can never be filled. At first he seems to have thought but of two things; namely the grave, and the barren womb, which might properly be called the daughters of the horse-leach: but he presently adds another; nay, and a fourth came into his mind, as no less insatiable: this he expresses after the mariner of the Hebrews, who, intending to mention four things, or more, separate them at first, and begin with a lesser number, and then proceed to all that they designed. We have an example hereof in the 18th and 21st verses; in chap. Proverbs 6:10.; and in Amos 5:9. The LXX, in the Roman edition, read: The horse-leach hath three beloved daughters, and these three are never satisfied; and there is a fourth, which saith not, it sufficeth: and the unlearned reader will remark, that in our translation a number of words are thrown in, which being taken away, would very much assimilate ours to the translation of the LXX. See Scheuchzer on the place.