Circle the Planet
Is. 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in...
Job 26:10 He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.
Prov. 8:27 When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth...
Skeptics will assume from these verses a concept of a flat, circular, pancake-like earth. In each case, the Hebrew word here is exactly the same:
chuwg. And here is where we alert the reader to another key word-concept that is missing in Hebrew: There was no varying word for a "sphere" - a three-dimensional circle. It is not
that the Hebrews or anyone else lacked the concept of sphericity (for obviously, they could conceive of it plainly when, for example, they ate pomegranates for breakfast), but that they simply did not create a second word for it.
Some may cite in reply here the KJV version of Is. 22:18, "He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a
ball into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house." The Hebrew word here, however, is
duwr. This word no more inidicates sphericity than our other word, for it is used by Isaiah elsewhere thusly:
Is. 29:3 And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.
Obviously, the soldiers could not camp in the shape of a sphere around the city. Based on this and other usages, this word appears to be making a statement about a circular pattern rather than giving reference to a given shape.
Does the Bible teach that the Earth is flat? <--- click for more
