Job 26:7

Suspended over nothing

Job (Wisdom Literature, Old Testament) · Wisdom poetry

Verse & chapter context

World English Bible (verified corpus)

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What the passage explicitly says

God stretches out the north (tsafon) over empty space (tohu) and hangs (talah) the earth on nothing (belimah — 'not-a-thing').

What requires interpretation

belimah is a hapax legomenon meaning 'nothingness'. Whether Job intends the surrounding cosmos or a literal void is interpretation.

Flat-circle interpretation

The earth hangs unsupported in a way still compatible with a fixed, founded plane — 'nothing' being the primordial void or the abyss beneath.

Globe-compatible interpretation

Anticipates the modern picture of a planet suspended in space with no visible support.

Original-language study

תָּלָה
talah · H8518
Hebrew

To hang; suspend.

Brown–Driver–Briggs (BibleHub reprint)
בְּלִימָה
belimah · H1099
Hebrew

Nothingness; nothing at all. Occurs only in Job 26:7.

Brown–Driver–Briggs (BibleHub reprint)
אֶרֶץ
erets · H776
Hebrew

Earth; land; the ground or a defined territory.

Brown–Driver–Briggs (BibleHub reprint)

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Questions for further study

  • How does 'hangs the earth on nothing' relate to 'foundations of the earth' elsewhere?
  • What is tsafon ('the north') doing in this verse?
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Personal notes

Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain) — Heavens Declare verified corpus. Every verse on this page is rendered from the verified corpus already ingested into Heavens Declare — not from the discovery article.

Verse discovery: BibleStudyTools — Bible Verses About Flat Earth Secondary topical-index reference used only to seed the verse list. Not the source of Scripture text or lexical claims. Retrieved 2026-07-26.