The Physical Earth
According to Scripture


(Copyright©2024 by Daniel B. Sedory. All Rights Reserved.)

 

 

  Although the Bible is certainly not a college textbook on earth sciences, what it has to say about the home of all humanity is not only quite amazing but has never been shown to be wrong; in spite of its critics.

 

No Ropes, Cables, Elephants (nor any gods) Attached

  In Job 26:7, we find one of the most profound statements for a document as early as this book: That God “suspends the earth on nothing” (NET Bible). This was at a time when some believed earthquakes were caused by the movement of giant elephants upon which the earth stood (but what did they stand on? A turtle!) or due to a god called Atlas whenever he shrugged (Atlas being a Titan who was condemned by later Greek gods to hold up the world). There are other myths and tales across the world concerning this topic, yet, the Hebrew Scriptures informed the Israelites that the earth neither hung from nor rested upon anything!

 

Does the Earth have Four Corners?

  There are a number of passages in Scripture where the phrase "four corners" is used to describe objects and dwellings; for example, the Tabernacle and its surrounding area in Exodus chapters 25 ff. were both rectangular. The easiest way to build houses (cf. Job 1:19) or enclosures was to have 4 straight lines of material with 4 corners. But in Revelation 7:1, we read about, “four angels standing at [or on] the four corners of the earth.” Does this mean the earth itself has four corners (implying it is either rectangular or square in shape)?

 

If you believe that Scripture tells us the earth has four literal corners, then you must also believe God has physical wings! Nor would such a diagram as this even agree with a wooden literal reading of Revelation 20:8; which says there will be people living in nations “in the four corners[1] of the earth.” Thus, you cannot have the whole known world confined to only the brown circular area, and yet have four corners where people can also live!

  Well, before reaching such a conclusion, let’s first look at more Scripture; the Bible always being the best commentary on itself! And some topics may require us to consider the context of all Scripture; not only that of a paragraph or even a whole book, let alone a single verse. In Isaiah 11:12, we also find the phrase “the four corners of the earth,” but here it speaks about God gathering the dispersed people of Israel and returning those who were scattered from Judah to the “the four corners of the earth” back to the land of Israel. Although the northern 10 tribes had already been taken captive by the Assyrians, the conquest of Judah did not happen during Isaiah’s lifetime. But Jeremiah saw the fall of Jerusalem as predicted in Isaiah, and both Ezekiel and Daniel lived through the dispersion of Israel; being captives in Babylon. Finally, in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, we read about the return of the Babylonian captives to Jerusalem after the fall of Babylon. But none of these books ever mention someone who had actually been sent to a literal "corner of the earth." Compare that with Ezekiel 7:2 (“The end is coming on the four corners of the land!”) which, from the context, obviously meant the whole nation of Israel; not some literal corners, as if only the corners of its borders (if it even had four corners at that time) would be attacked. It referred to all of Israel, no matter how its borders were shaped. Lastly, Revelation 20:8 tells us that “the nations which are in the four corners of the earth,” will be deceived into gathering for war against God’s people. Yet there is no nation or even any location on earth that can be described as having a literal “corner” after its whole surface has been explored by mankind. Thus, the phrase in question is a metaphor (or an idiom) for the farthest known regions of the earth at the time of its use.

There are many such usages throughout Scripture; for example, do any of you really believe that God has a body with wings?! That’s what you would have to believe if you took Psalm 91:4 literally! Nor did God, prior to the conception of the Messiah,[2] ever have any kind of physical body that was inseparable from His Eternal Being, because apart from His attribute of being present everywhere,[3] we read in John 4:24 that “God is spirit” [ literally, "Spirit the God"; or pneuma ho theos (πνεῦμα ὁ θεός) in the Greek — where the word “spirit” is what we call a qualitative predicate nominative, placed first in the sentence to emphasize that spirit (versus anything material or created) is a quality (or attribute) of God’s Being ]. God is not simply a spirit, among all the other beings (like angels) that are spirits, nor like Believers who will end up having spiritual bodies,[4] but rather the One Who has always existed as spirit from all eternity! (A concept so foreign to us as created beings, we can’t help but ask as children, "But where did God come from?")

A much more modern use of the phrase (never used in Scripture this way), would be a reference to the 4 points (north, east, south and west) of a magnetic compass (first made use of around 1000 AD in China). Those 4 directions, however, were in use long before that. Many different Hebrew words have been associated with these four directions in English translations: For example, mizrāch {4217}[5] basically refers to the location of the rising sun and qādiym {6921}; almost always meaning east or eastward and qedem {6924} most often translated as east. Various related words include the meanings of ancient, before (in time), antiquity, front and former (state). [More will be added about the W, N and S directions in the future, but I want to finish the section below first.]

 

Is the Earth a Circular Disk?

  In Isaiah 40:22, God is described as sitting “above [or upon][6] the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers...” If this were the only verse in Scripture giving us a description of the earth, it would be too vague: Some would rightfully ask, "What does this “circle” — as only a part “of the earth” — refer to?" Whereas others might conclude that the whole earth is a “circle” (that no matter how deep it may be, the shape of the earth is circular; rather than spherical).

Here are the Hebrew words for that phrase, “above [or upon] the circle of the earth” (with a transliteration [see our Transliteration Guide here], followed by the Strong’s reference number and a simple English translation in parentheses for each word):
עַל (ʿal {5921} above), חוּג (chûg {2329} circle), הָ ({no Strong’s #} the - always prefixed to whatever word follows) and אָרֶץ (ʾārets {776} earth).

And this is how the phrase actually appears in the Hebrew Scriptures (note that Hebrew is always read from right-to-left; including every letter in every word):

עַל־ח֣וּג הָאָ֔רֶץ

  As mentioned above, the Bible is always the best commentary on itself, and God did not leave us in the dark concerning that verse in Isaiah. But before we examine another passage concerning what God revealed to us about the earth, we must first do a little Hebrew word study:

A Word Study on takhliyth (תַּכְלִית)

  The reason for this word study will become clear shortly. The word occurs 5 times in Scripture. Here are the first four [in various English translations; with the word(s) for takhliyth underlined]:

Job 11:7
“Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” (KJV)
“Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?” (NASB)
“Can you discover the essence of God? Can you find out the perfection of the Almighty?” (NET)

Job 28:3
“He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death.” (KJV)
Man puts an end to darkness, And to the farthest limit he searches out The rock in gloom and deep shadow.” (NASB)
”Man puts an end to the darkness; he searches the farthest recesses for the ore in the deepest darkness.” (NET)

This verse must be read within the context of Job 28:1-6, which makes it very clear that mine shafts and rocks (or "ore") containing gold, silver and other metals below the surface of the earth are being spoken of here. For those interested in digging deeper (pun intended) into this verse, there's more about its structure in this footnote here.[7] The word takhliyth, whether translated as perfection, limit or recesses, is qualified only by the Hebrew word כֹּל (kōl {3605} whole, complete) all or farthest in these verses (that is, as far, or deep, or as much, as humans had been able to discover up to that time; not that they had dug mines everywhere they ever possibly could).

Psalm 139:22
“I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.” (KJV)
“I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.” (NASB)
“I absolutely hate them, they have become my enemies!” (NET)

Rather than a physical attribute, this verse is similar to the use of takhliyth in Job 11. In this Psalm, David sings about how wonderful the works of Yahweh are, and that He is not only present everywhere (Psalm 139:7) and knows our thoughts (Psalm 139:2), but also knows everything we will say in the future (Psalm 139:4). And in verse 16, David states that even before he was formed, God knew how many days he would exist on this earth! The psalm finishes with David stating that due to how much “the wicked” hate Yahweh and speak against Him, that he cannot help but hate them as much as he possibly could with what we might call a righteous hatred; both thoughts coming together in the English word “perfect” in the KJV, though the main force of takhliyth here is still its extent as its translation by “utmost” and “absolutely” show.

And lastly, Nehemiah 3:21
“After him repaired Meremoth the son of Urijah the son of Koz another piece, from the door of the house of Eliashib even to the end of the house of Eliashib.” (KJV)
“After him Meremoth the son of Uriah the son of Hakkoz repaired another section, from the doorway of Eliashib's house even as far as the end of his house.” (NASB)
“After him Meremoth son of Uriah, the son of Hakkoz, worked on another section from the door of Eliashib's house to the end of it.” (NET)

  The whole chapter (verses 1 through 32) is about rebuilding or repairing the walls and gates of Jerusalem. In this verse, Nehemiah is obviously describing a distance or measurement from the door of a house to the “end” of a house; certainly not its destruction.

  The main point in doing this word study was to prove that translations of takhliyth {8503} as “end” (or perfect, perfection, limit or any other English word used to translate it) has nothing to do with time! The word is clearly related to the end of some distance or the limit of something, qualified by other words such as farthest or implying that one cannot actually measure or discover a particular limit (perfect, perfection, unlimited, limitless) as in the case of the Almighty.

  Before moving on, it should be noted that the phrase “come to an end” in relation to time is used by almost all English Bible translations for the Hebrew word גָּמַר (gāmar {1584} cease, fail, come to an end, be no more, but also as complete and perfect) in Psalm 7:9 (7:10 in the Hebrew Text). That word is also used in Psalm 12:2 and 77:9 with the idea of ceasing to exist; but in Psalm 57:3 and 138:8, in the sense of accomplishing or bringing to completion. So the Holy Spirit could have used gāmar instead of takhliyth if God wanted to tell us that something was coming to an end in time.

 

A Scripture Commentary on the Circle of the Earth

  The author of the book of Job is unknown, but the events it describes are highly likely from around the time of Abraham, or earlier, and certainly prior to the life of Isaiah. Though Job 26:10 does not use the same exact phrase as Isaiah (“circle of the earth”), the Hebrew verb, חוּג (chûg {2328}; spelled as חָג chāg in this verse, and not to be confused with the noun {2329}; which is spelled the same, and what Isaiah used and we translate as “circle”) means: to encompass, mark out or inscribe a circle, and is used here in such a way that Isaiah may have purposely alluded to it (in Isaiah 40:22). The KJV translates this verse (with Strong’s numbers and italic print showing added words) as:

He hath compassed{2328} the waters{4325} with bounds{2706}, until{5704} the day{216} and night{2822} come to an end{8503}.“ (KJV)

Here is how the verse appears in the Hebrew Masoretic Scriptures with all its accents and punctuation (remember, Hebrew is read from right to left):

10    חֹֽק־חָ֭ג עַל־פְּנֵי־מָ֑יִם עַד־תַּכְלִ֖ית א֣וֹר עִם־חֹֽשֶׁךְ׃

This table shows each Hebrew word without any accents or punctuation, its Strong’s number and transliteration below it, and a simple English word I chose to associate with it:

חֹשֶׁךְ
עִם
אוֹר
תַּכְלִית
עַד
מָיִם
פְּנֵי
עַל
חָג
חֹק
{2822}
chōshek
{5973}
ʿim
{216}
ʾôr
{8503}
takhliyth
{5704}
ʿad
{4325}
māyim
{6440}
pey
{5921}
ʿal
{2328}
chāg
{2706}
chōq
night
with
day
end
at
waters
face(s)
on
encircle
boundary

Upon comparison, the first thing one might notice is that neither the word עַל ʿal {5921} (which is the same word translated as “above” in Isa 40:22) nor the word פָּנִים (pāniym {6440}; face or surface; spelled as pey פְּנֵי here) were translated in the KJV. Those words and waters are all connected by two punctuation marks, appearing as: עַל־פְּנֵי־מָ֑יִם in the Hebrew Text, similar to one big compound word in English. And instead of ʿal being translated as “above” (as it was in Isaiah) it would be translated as on or upon, since it is discussing the “waters” here and not the sky or heavens above them. So, we should actually have: He encompassed or He inscribed a circle on the face of the waters.

  So, why doesn't the AV/KJV include these words? Well, basically because that would make it very difficult to conform those words to an interpretation that had been passed down to them through all previous English versions: The idea that God was keeping the seas in check (within “bounds”) from covering the earth again, like they did during the Flood. And that couldn't be true for a circle God marked out on the face of the waters! Although the thought expressed in those versions is certainly true, since it has the support of Genesis 9:15 and Psalm 104:9, it is not what the Holy Spirit actually had the human author of Job write down for all who would read this verse throughout time!

And in order to have the rest of the verse conform to their thoughts, rather than allowing the words about there being a physical location which marked the “end” of light with (or by) darkness, all previous English versions added words not found in the Hebrew to state that both day and night would “come to an end.” This is why I included the word study on takhliyth above. If you didn't read that, do so now! Anyone who works through that study, should agree:

    “The qualification in 26:10b is not temporal (AV) but spatial (ASV).”[8]

In other words, it's not possible for these words to mean the “end” of anything in time, but rather a way to designate a physical limit as in the distance “unto the end of the house of Eliashib” (Nehemiah 3:21) or “to every end [that is, to the farthest limit] he exploreth” (Job 28:3), or as here in 26:10 where unto the end of refers to a boundary between day and night. For more on the history of the translations of this verse, see our Footnote 9.[9]

  Taking all that into consideration, you can see why the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV) translated this verse as:

    He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters, Unto the confines of light and darkness. (ASV)
Though possibly not quite literal enough, that certainly conveys the fact that this passage has nothing to do with the end of the world; as so many commentators from previous centuries had thought it must refer to.[10]

Then we see this verse in the New American Standard Bible versions as:

    He has inscribed a circle on the surface of the waters At the boundary of light and darkness. (NASB)

I used the same background highlighting as before, to show how this version has a direct translation for almost every Hebrew word in the Text. The reason you do not see a separate English word for takhliyth (“end”) is possibly because it was combined into “boundary” rather than having what would be the odd sounding phrase “end boundary” (though it could have been translated as “extreme boundary” instead). Another literal translation which includes something from both of those Hebrew words might be:

    He marks out a circular limiting boundary on the surface of the waters at the end of light with darkness.

Why did the Spirit of God choose to use the word māyim (waters) instead of ʾārets (land/earth) here? Though I obviously cannot say for sure, I believe that for all the Israelites reading Job, whenever they had the chance to look across the Mediterranean Sea during the setting of the sun at the western edge of those ancient lands, it would have provided as clear an example as possible for what this verse calls the boundary between light (day) and darkness (night). However, from the perspective of the Creator Himself, with Isaiah 40:22 in mind, since about 71 percent of the earth’s surface is water, then most of the time that this north-south boundary between day and night is moving from east to west, a much greater length of it will be on the waters of the earth! It took humanity a very long time to come to that conclusion. (And emphasizing this boundary on the waters of the earth, does not mean to the exclusion of all dry land.)

What is the Extent of this Circular Boundary in Job?

  Some English translations of this verse use the word horizon to describe the circle that God marks or draws on the waters. But there's a problem with that: The word "horizon" simply means as far as someone can see in any direction. Under ideal conditions, with no obstructions, if the eyes of a person with no vision issues are 5 feet off the ground (or the level of a lake or sea), they cannot see the surface of the ground (or sea) farther than about 2-3/4 miles away from them. For a taller person, or especially if they hike up a hill, or are high up on a skyscraper or a mountain, the distance to their horizon will increase. But here's the problem: At any given moment in time, for each heavily populated location on earth, at the moment of sunset or sunrise, we know for a fact that the boundary between light (day) and darkness (night) extends very far to the north and south beyond the horizon of anyone living even on top of an 8,000 foot mountain! Even those living thousands of years ago knew that. Likewise, we also know (and so did anyone living far in the past who thought about it), that the extent of light and darkness went far beyond their own eastern and western horizons. So, that's why the word horizon should not be viewed as an appropriate English translation for “circle” here.

  The point here is this: The boundary which separates day from night is much larger than any one location's horizon. Although it is true that just as the sun is setting on the western horizon for someone, that would be part of the boundary between day and night, the circular boundary that this verse refers to, actually spans across entire continents! For example, on March 20th, 2023, after the sun had already risen in both Alaska and Hawaii, the sun was only about to set in the country of Israel. And as already noted, this boundary between day and night extends far to the north and south as well.

  Although I can certainly see how Job, Moses or Isaiah, would have difficulties in understanding just how far the “boundary” between night and day extended, this verse shows that no matter what topic Scripture touches on, it is still, and will always be, reliable (provided it is not taken out of context).

The Only Possible Conclusion from Scripture

  At any moment in time, once enough points on the earth where it is known to be either day or night have been marked on a map, the only possible way for the boundary between them to be a circle is if the entire earth is a sphere! This fact has nothing to do with any data about the location, distance or nature of the light source we call the sun. It’s simply a matter of trusting in the truthfulness of Scripture when it says the boundary between day and night is a circle.

  The most common way to show all the continents on a two-dimensional map is using what's called a Mercator projection, and the following diagrams show what the boundaries between night and day would look like for the Spring (sun over Equator), Summer, Fall (sun again over Equator) and Winter at random North or South American locations close to where the sun might be directly overhead at close to noon (the boundary between them is obviously not a circle, so we know that we do not live on an earth shaped like a rectangle):

Day & Night, March 20, 2024
Day & Night, June 21, 2024
Day & Night, September 22, 2024
Day & Night, December 22, 2024

There is a nice animation in the following section of an article on the Mercator projection titled Distortion of sizes which shows how much larger (overly distorted in size) parts of northern (and southern) countries appear compared to those close to the Equator.

  The map projection most often used by those who want to believe the earth is only a circular disk is called an azimuthal equidistant projection which simply means that all the distances from the point chosen to be the center of the map along its north-south longitude lines will be equal from any latitude to the next. Here's a diagram showing such a map centered on Los Angeles, California. And here's one centered on the North Pole. That diagram is quite similar to the ones used by some people not only as a simple projection, but how they believe the earth is actually shaped.

  The implications for anyone who believes the earth to be a circular disk are these: As soon as you plot all the locations where the sun has just set or is about to rise, that is, the boundary of day and night, they are impossible to reconcile with any proposed circular disk map! The only way to have a circular boundary between day and night at any time, during every season of the year is for the earth to be a sphere. If you take the following links, you will find a few examples showing the daylight as the COLOR YELLOW; with the apparent location of the sun as a RED dot, and the BLUE area being where it is night. You can see the impossibility of those areas being separated by a circular boundary; especially during the season we in the northern parts of the world call Winter:

Summer, June 21/22, 2017 (even when the sun shines over the center of this projection, the line between night and day is clearly not a “circular” shape),
Winter, December 21/22, 2017 (this also shows that the sun shines all around the outer White and Yellow edges of the projection, with an area of long winter months of darkness between them and the sun).

Whereas the next two animations show what’s called an Orthographic projection (which is similar to a globe) for the same Summer and Winter dates above:
Circular Summer Boundary, Circular Winter Boundary. For both of these animations, you can see that the boundary (about half of which cannot be seen at any moment in time, because the boundary continues on the other side of the map) is clearly circular!

I'm hoping to post some other diagrams on this page in the near future.

 

 


Everything below these lines (with the exception of the Footnotes!) is still being worked on!!!


 

 

Scripture is always true, no matter what anyone believes to have been proven to the contrary.

 

I plan on adding more here in the future; whenever I study a particular subject concerning our Universe! More Scripture, diagrams and photos of textbooks from many centuries ago, etc. will appear here. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me.

  For anyone who wishes to do so, they can gather lists of sunrise and sunset times for any day from multiple local news outlets for any city in the world and compare those with the data used to plot where day and night occur in the world for the course of a whole year. Even those who still believe the earth is only a circular disk, have no reason to dispute this data as being anything other than proven fact. They could even make random calls to numbers in various cities and simply ask if it is still day or night. Long ago, ever since communications via telegraph was possible, one could get a reply back from locations far away to determine the accuracy of sunset and sunrise times. And by the use of fairly accurate clocks (within a minute's time) which have existed for well over 200 years now, you could also create lists of how long day and night lasted at any particular location.

The Book of Job

  I plan on writing more about Job, pointing out its ironic and poetic passages, but also many insights we can appreciate from God's perspective! Job 38:14 will be one of those passages.

 


Footnotes

1[Return to Text] The AV / KJV uses the word “quarters” here, but the Greek word (γωνία, -ας gōnia, -as {1137}) is the same one used in Revelation 7:1 (it's always used for a corner; such as the corner of a street in Mt. 6:5, or a number of references to Jesus as a corner stone (e.g., Acts 4:11). The 1611 editors simply chose quarters as being synonymous with the word corner, since the two phrases (“four corners of the earth” and “four quarters of the earth”) meant the same thing at that time.

2[Return to Text] See John 1:14 [literally: "And the Word flesh became..." (kai ho logos sarx egeneto...; καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο...)], Philippians 2:6-7 and Luke 1:31, 35. This is also referred to as the "Incarnation" (from the Latin word, incarnare, from in- "into" plus caro, carn- "flesh"; which literally means into flesh or just as John wrote: became flesh). However, the Philippians 2 passage points out that the Word (the Messiah, the Christ) was not somehow changed into a mere man, but rather that He took (literally: "form a slave took"; morphēn doulou labōn; μορφὴν δούλου λαβών), or took on (as in added) the attributes of a human being to his existing God-Nature. We know that his essential Nature as God was still part of his Being due to a number of events in his life on earth which could only be attributed to God: For example, see John 2:1-11, where it is said that Jesus manifested or revealed “his glory” (the same phrase used in John 1:14; tēn doxan autou; τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ; literally: “the glory of him”) rather than asking or praying for God to perform a miracle; Matthew 8:26-27, Jesus “rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” ... “even winds and sea obey him”, it was not like Moses who obeyed God and did as God asked regarding the Red Sea, but rather Jesus directly commanding the storm to cease! There are many other examples like these in the Gospels. And, of course, we see in Matthew 17:1-8 (and Mark 9:2-8) that “he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun” which revealed that the Word (who had become Jesus, the Messiah) did not give up His God-Nature when becoming a man!

3[Return to Text] See Jeremiah 23:24 (“Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the LORD) and Psalm 139:7 (“Where can I flee from Your presence?”). This is simply not possible for any kind of being confined by the restraints of a body! Not even angels, as fast as they may travel, can focus on more than one location at a time!

4[Return to Text] See 1 Corinthians 15:44 (but for context, begin reading at verse 40 and all the way to the end of the chapter).

5[Return to Text] Numbers in braces "{ }" (like the one above) refer to what are known as "Strong’s Numbers" first found in the Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible by James Strong. These can be used as an index to the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words of Scripture. In this work, all such references have been linked to entries at the Blue Letter Bible site. (Note: The meanings and pronunciations given at that site are not necessarily what I would agree with in all cases.) You may email me (see below), if you are interested in a set of PDF files with a linked copy of the KJV (Old and New Testaments) to the Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries of Strong’s concordance.

For a guide to the transliteration of Hebrew consonants and vowel points as used on this website, see my page: Transliteration Guide.

6[Return to Text] The AV / KJV uses the English word "upon" rather than “above” here. But the phrase is describing God as if He were a man who could sit (just as Scripture often uses the phrase “the hand of God” as if he had a human body with hands; which footnote 2 has already pointed out is not true), so it doesn't really matter whether we use above or upon here, since neither could be literally true of God needing to sit anywhere. However, we believe the choice of “above, over (of elevation or pre-eminence)” is more fitting when speaking of our Creator sitting over us; rather than on the earth.

7[Return to Text] In the Hebrew Text, this verse begins with קֵץ (qēts {7093} end), followed by the verb to put, place or set and then "to the darkness". Next comes וּֽלְכָל which is composed of two particles and the noun כֹּל (kōl {3605} whole, complete; basically meaning all in the KJV, or farthest in the other translations quoted) and the punctuation mark, ־ (called a מַקֵּף Maqqēph, sort of like the hyphen between compound words in English) is immediately followed by takhliyth (thus, they all appear together in the Hebrew Text as: וּֽלְכָל־תַּ֭כְלִית ). The 3rd person masculine singular pronoun הוּא (hûʾ meaning he) is followed by the noun חוֹקֵר (chōqēr {3389} to search out), and then by the nouns for stone and darkness.

8[Return to Text] The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer (OT) and Everette F. Harrison (NT) (Copyright©1962 by the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, Fourteenth Printing, 1977), p. 479.

9[Return to Text] One must go all the way back to the time of Jerome, around 400 AD, to read about various translations of Scripture into Latin; some good, some bad. Jerome is supposed to have been the first to have translated Scripture directly from Hebrew into Latin. See here: Latin Vulgate for some more about his work. Any version we have of the Latin Vulgate today, with some minor punctuation differences, will appear as follows (along with an English translation here) for our passage in Job:

    “10 Terminum circumdedit aquis, usque dum finiantur lux et tenebræ.”
      “He hath set bounds about the waters, till light and darkness come to an end.” [You can find this at: Vulgate Bible Online] Google Translate is close to this as well:
      “He surrounded the border with the waters until the light and the darkness ended.”

    (After checking this against reputable sources, with the exception of punctuation, those words compared exactly to the Biblia Sacra luxta Vulgatam Versionem, Fifth Revised Edition, edited by Roger Gryson, ©2007 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. The Latin only, can also be found at the: academic bible.com website.)

As you can see, those words are only slightly different than those of the AV (KJV), and they ended up in the English translations of the Wycliffe, Coverdale, Matthew’s, Great, Geneva and Bishop’s Bibles. In earlier versions of Wycliffe's Bible, the passage read something like this (source): “He hath (en)compassed a term, or an end, to (the) waters, till that light and darkness be ended.” But in later versions it was changed to the more familiar: “(He hath surrounded the waters with a border, where light and darkness meet.)” But both of those are more like the Latin Vulgate than the Hebrew Masoretic Text.

  [ Although I'm sure individual sources may be found elsewhere, my source for the following quotes was this one webpage; which has at least three spelling differences from the original Geneva Bible, so always compare these against original sources to be accurate]:

    “He hath cumpassid a terme to watris, til that liyt and derknessis be endid.” (1382, Wycliffe Bible)
    “He hath copased the waters wt certayne boundes, vntill the daye & night come to an ende.” (1535, Coverdale Bible)
    “He hath compaseth the waters wt certayne boundes, vntill the day and night come to an ende.” (1537, Matthew’s Bible)
    “He hath compased the waters with certayne boundes vntill the daye & nyght come to an ende.” (1539, The Great Bible)
    “He hath set bounds about the waters, vntil the day and night come to an ende.” (1560 and 1599, Geneva Bibles)
    “He hath compassed the waters with certayne boundes, vntill the day and night come to an ende” (1568, Bishop’s Bible)

In fact, because the Geneva Bible was so popular at the time the AV was commissioned by the king, that may have been one of the deciding factors in keeping what had become the very long time "traditional interpretation" of this verse, rather than examining and creating a new translation from the Hebrew Text.

Here's an indication of what anyone with a Geneva Bible would have seen in its notes and accepted as Scripture:


The note reads: "So long as this world endureth;" obviously implying that the “until ... come to an end” was to be taken as the end of the world. Some notes in this Bible version were actually quite helpful for its readers; such as this one on Job 26:11, “Not that heaven hath pillers to uphold it, but he speaketh by similitude, as though he would say, The heaven itself is not able to abide his reproach.”

But what about the Scriptures that were often used by Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, John and the Apostle Paul when writing books of the New Testament for those who couldn't read Hebrew? These writers often quoted from the Greek Septuagint (abbreviated as LXX) version of the Scriptures. Is that translation closer to the Hebrew Masoretic Text or to what we have in the Vulgate for this verse? Well, for those of you who are Greek scholars, here is the verse from the LXX:

    πρόσταγμα ἐγύρωσεν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον ὕδατος μέχρι συντελείας φωτὸς μετὰ σκότους.
    (Transliteration: prostagma egurōsen epi prosōpon hudatos mechri sunteleias phōtos meta skotous.)

In the work, A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ©2007 by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc., this verse is translated as:

    “He circumscribed a decree on the face of the waters, as far as the limit of light with darkness.” (NETS; Used by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.)

Well, if that's an accurate translation of the Septuagint, it would certainly show that the LXX, the Bible of the earliest Christians, was much closer to the Hebrew than the Latin of the Vulgate for this verse! However, after examining the Greek word (sunteleias; συντελείας, completion, close, end) that was used to translate the Hebrew takhliyth, it appears that even the translators of the LXX thought the passage must have been some kind of an end in time or at the very least the completion of something, rather than how they translated it in Nehemiah 3:21 using (heōs; ἕως) as far as the (ekleipseōs ἐκλείψεως) lack of, dearth, want (Dt. 28:48; Pr. 14:28), diminished, fade, failing (Is. 17:4), break, remove, consume (Ez. 5:16), and literally, used throughout history for an eclipse of the sun or moon. Why they would use such words for takhliyth in Job 26:10 and Nehemiah 3:21 might be found in Jewish literature from long ago or in Jewish commentaries, but that’s well beyond the scope of this footnote. But the context of Job 28:3 was more than enough to convince the LXX translators to use the Greek word (peras, πέρας) for the limit, boundary or end of a place (used in the idiomatic phrase “ends of the earth” in Matthew 12:42 and Romans 10:18).

Then in 1862 (though there may have been someone prior to this), Robert Young, the author of the Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible, in his Young’s Literal Translation, began to make sense of the Hebrew by translating this verse as:
    A limit He hath placed on the waters, Unto the boundary of light with darkness. (YLT)

Unfortunately, Young did not translate the circularity of the “limit” God placed on the waters; so not truly literal in my opinion, but he definitely showed his readers that the “boundary” in the second half of the verse has nothing to do with the end of the world (that it's rather a physical division of some kind between light and darkness.)

Finally, in 1885 and 1901, the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version, both used wording similar to that of Young giving rise to English translations that were finally examining the Hebrew Text rather than reading into it an assumed interpretation from almost 1500 years of tradition:

    He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters, unto the confines [limit] of light and darkness. (Job 26:10 ERV and ASV)

To those, we can also add that THE HOLY SCRIPTURES: According to the Masoretic Text by the Jewish Publication Society (©1917) translated this verse using the same English words:
    "He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters, Unto the confines of light and darkness." (19th printing, Jan 1945, p. 947)
  [Return to Text]

10[Return to Text] Some examples of this would include: Matthew Henry (1662-1714), who wrote in his Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706) about this verse:

    (2.) He sets bounds to the waters of the sea, and compasses them in (v. 10), that they may not return to cover the earth; and these bounds shall continue unmoved, unshaken, unworn, till the day and night come to an end, when time shall be no more. (Reference: this Bible Hub page.)
And the earlier Matthew Poole (1624-1679) in his commentary ("unto the end of the world"), John Gill (1697-1771) appears to concur, as did Joseph Benson (1749-1821) in his Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical (1811-1815). The Pulpit Commentary (1880 to 1919), though pointing out that “Until the day and night come to an end is a mistranslation.” is both vague and confusing since it fails to provide an actual translation! Thomas Coke (1747-1814) must have gone back to the Hebrew Text when he wrote in his 1802 commentary: “He hath set a circle as a boundary upon the face of the waters, even to the extremity of light with darkness; i.e. to the very edge where light and darkness meet.” But he goes way off into his own conjectures on what this means when commenting on Job 28:3.

 


First Posted on: 20 DEC 2023 (2023.12.20).
Updated on: 28 DEC 2023 (2023.12.28); slightly revised; added more footnotes, 14 JAN 2024 (2024.01.14); minor corrections, 10 APR 2024 (2024.04.10); added note about a different Hebrew word that does mean come to an end, 12 JUL 2024 (2024.07.12); minor corrections and an update to footnote 9, 14 JUL 2024 (2024.07.14); added Note 10.

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