Believer says: Job 26:7 says the earth hangs on nothing. God told Job that the earth was held in place by gravity a thousand years before Isaac Newton’s law of gravitational attraction!
Skeptic says: It says as follows:
7 He stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing.
7 He stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing.
Scholars say the verse is a mystery. Well, the key is that back then the sky had an empty space where a polar star stands today; astronomy says that the north pole points to a different space in the sky after lots of time. So I side with others and say it's why the poet says “stretches out the north over empty space.”
It looked as if the stars went in a circle around the empty place in the sky. The earth hung under it, on nothing, so to speak.
Scholars say Job was written in two parts between 600 BC and 400 BC. The sky hadn't a celestial north star during those centuries.
Yes, Job says the earth hangs on nothing. But it could have to do with just empty sky and not gravity.
Recap: The north sky had no pole star when Job 26 was written. I say it portrays a dark and empty space in the north sky and the earth is positioned under it. In the poetic sense, the earth hung on nothing.
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