He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. Job 26:7
One correct understanding of Scripture is often the key to understanding another portion. For example, recognising that the spirit, or soul, is not immortal annihilates the deception that the sinner will burn forever in hell. By the same token, one erroneous understanding of the Bible will deny you the keys to understanding many other verses.
To the believer in heliocentric ‘science’, Job’s announcements about creation are a riddle more unsolvable than the one Samson put to the Philistines. In the second half of his enigmatic description, Job declares that God ‘hangeth the earth upon nothing’.
The day after God stretched out the firmament over the formless void, ‘God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so’ (Genesis 1:9). On this third day of creation, God commanded the waters under the heaven, or firmament, to subside to our current sea level. As these waters drained, the dry land which God had already made simply ‘appeared’ – similar to how submerged rocks hidden under the waves appear on the seashore during an outgoing tide. The next thing we read is: ‘And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good’.
Regarding the firm foundation we find under our feet, Job declares: ‘[He] hangeth the earth upon nothing’. Now, to hang something is to suspend it from something overhead. While we may be glimpsing at an unfathomable design feature of our world in this verse, David speaks of the same miraculous feat of engineering, but flips the focus from what is suspending the earth from above to what is supporting it from underneath:
For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Psalm 24:2
Manmade structures or platforms need a solid foundation or else storm and tempest will sweep them away. But the world’s combined mass of solid rock and earth (to which men fasten all of their edifices) is itself ‘founded’ upon something no man could lay a single brick upon - deep waters. In man’s estimation, therefore, is not the earth ‘hung upon nothing’?
Indeed, we may continually marvel with Job as we behold the infinite wisdom of our great God ‘which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number’ (Job 9:10).
Christopher Sparks