Job 37:3

Firmament & the heavens

Job (Wisdom Literature, Old Testament) · Wisdom poetry / speech of Elihu

Verse & chapter context

World English Bible (verified corpus)

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What the passage explicitly says

God sends out his voice/lightning under the whole sky and to the 'kanphei ha'arets' — the wings/corners/ends of the earth.

What requires interpretation

kanaph literally means 'wing/edge/extremity'. Whether the corners are geographic or poetic is interpretation.

Flat-circle interpretation

Thunder travels from horizon to horizon across a bounded earth with four wings/corners.

Globe-compatible interpretation

Poetic merism for 'everywhere' — extremities of a habitable region rather than literal geometric corners.

Original-language study

כָּנָף
kanaph · H3671
Hebrew

Wing; edge; corner; extremity — often used of the four extremities of the earth.

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

Earth; land; the ground or a defined territory.

Brown–Driver–Briggs (BibleHub reprint)

Compare related passages

Questions for further study

  • How does 'kanphei ha'arets' function elsewhere (Isaiah 11:12; Ezekiel 7:2)?
  • How does Elihu use thunder theology?
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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.