He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. Job 26:7
Precious metals and gemstones are only found by strenuous excavation and painstaking sifting. While a prospector’s eye finds great satisfaction in the gnarled nugget in his palm, the polished beauty of a verse of Scripture revealed to the heart is above the finest gold.
In Scripture, ‘the North' is frequently associated with the habitation of God. Sung the Psalmist:
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. Psalm 48:2
Truly, the presence of Jehovah dwelt between the two cherubim in the city of David. But Mount Zion in Palestine is only a type of the Zion above, where our God sits enthroned to this very day. The exact phrase employed by David to indicate the dwelling place of the Most High was also used by Isaiah. In his quest to be ‘like the most High’, Lucifer sought to seat himself in ‘the sides of the north’ – to set his throne in the place of the Great King.
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Isaiah 14:14
Some chapters later, the prophet Isaiah tells us that the Almighty sits enthroned directly above this world:
It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers… Isaiah 40:22
With the understanding that ‘the sides of the North’ indicates the dwelling place of God, which is ‘upon [or above] the circle of the earth’, we may carefully draw some conclusions regarding Job 26:7. Since Job’s cryptic depiction is clearly a reference to creation, we will look to Genesis 1 for the keys to this enigma.
In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, our world was ‘without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep’ (Genesis 1:2). What Job described as ‘the empty place’ has to be an allusion to this featureless abyss of waters, which on day one was devoid of any organisation. Speaking light into existence expelled the darkness shrouding this ‘empty place’, but it wasn’t until God ‘made the firmament’ on the second day that any order was brought from the watery chaos. Isaiah vividly compares what transpired on the second day to the manufacture or setting up of a tent, saying that God ‘stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in’ (Isaiah 40:22).
Isaiah’s depiction of the stretching out of the firmament sounds remarkably similar to Job’s statement that God ‘stretcheth out the north over the empty place’. Therefore, we may conclude that ‘the north’ that was stretched out by God according to Job 26:7 is the same thing that Isaiah declared was stretched out by God – the firmament. Indeed, the crystalline structure of the firmament is in contact with the very feet of Jehovah, for when Moses and Aaron ‘saw the God of Israel…there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness’ (Exodus 24:10).
But since the span of the firmament is so large, we need to narrow down a certain locality, and Job’s succinct description provides us the means. Following the red end of a compass needle from any part of our realm below will eventually lead one to the north pole. This location, directly below the bright north star, is the very centre of the circle of the earth. It is only reasonable to understand that vertically perpendicular to this most northerly terrestrial location is the throne of the Great King, who sits upon ‘the sides of the north’.
(To be continued.)
Christopher Sparks