Untwisting Scripture: Refuting Flat Earth Falsehoods – Part 1
[Editor’s note: Christians have a moral obligation to rightly interpret God’s Word. We need to recognize and be ready to refute those who twist and misuse the holy Scriptures to promote false narratives. One example of such an abuse comes from those who claim that the Bible teaches a “flat” earth. On the one hand, this is such a ridiculous claim that it doesn’t seem worthy of a response. On the other hand, flat earthism has become almost a cult, drawing many people away from the true Gospel and making it more difficult for honest Christians to evangelize. In this series of articles, Pastor Jason Churchill exposes the fallacious eisegesis of those who promote flat earthism.]
Introduction
In the classic movie The Princess Bride, there’s a character named Vizzini who repeatedly utters the phrase, “Inconceivable!” when things don’t go the way he expects. At one point in the movie, upon hearing Vizzini say it once again, the master swordsman Inigo Montoya looks at him and in his inimitable Spanish accent says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Have you ever interacted with someone who believes that the Bible depicts a flat, stationary earth? Or perhaps encountered a meme asserting that “the Bible contains 200+ flat-earth verses”? Or have you seen someone on social media quote verses like Job 38:14, Psalm 96:10, or Joshua 10:12-13 as “proof” that the Bible indicates a flat, unmoving earth?
If you have, you’re not alone. These allegations proliferate online and in myriad other digital formats, coming not only from skeptics and critics of the Bible but also from numerous professing Christians who claim allegiance to it. But do these verses mean what they think they mean?
At first glance the claims of these FSIPs (Flat-Stationary Interpretation Proponents) seem rather intimidating. I mean, if they can quote or cite a bunch of verses that appear to validate their allegations, how can we argue against Scripture?
The key phrase in the previous question is ”appear to.” You see, any Scripture can be made to appear to say something that it doesn’t when taken in isolation. It can mean just about anything we want it to mean when taken out of context. We’ve all probably witnessed a cultist or critic twisting the meaning of a passage by doing this very thing.
As Dr. Jason Lisle has written, “Many of the errors committed by the critic can be described simply as a ’failure to read the text carefully.’ That is, the critic seems to have merely glanced at an isolated text without reading it in context, and has come away with an interpretation that no careful reader would hold.”[1]
The meanings of words and phrases often vary depending on their literary and grammatical context. When we fail to read a word or passage within its immediate context, we can easily make unwarranted associative jumps or arbitrarily define terms according to our preconceived ideas, which can and often does result in wrongly defining words and distorting the meaning of the text.
This fallacious practice of removing a passage from its surrounding words, sentences, or genre in a way that distorts its intended meaning is called contextomy. Similar to this is a practice called quote-mining. Quote-mining is the fallacious practice of citing or quoting verses out of context to make them seemingly validate or agree with one’s position.
As we’ll see in this series of articles, when we carefully examine the verses that FSIPs cite, it’s clear that they’ve engaged in both fallacies. In an effort to validate their flat and/or stationary presuppositions, these proponents have distorted the meanings of numerous biblical passages by ignoring their literary context.
My aim in these articles is to demonstrate that, when carefully examined within their context, not one of these verses means what the FSIPs think they mean. And so, let’s look at some of the more common citations of the FSIPs and read them within their immediate literary context to discover their biblically intended meanings.
The Citations
One of the most popular verses cited by FSIPs is Job 38:14. It says, “The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment” (NIV).
This verse often comes in the form of a meme with the picture of an ancient seal and its wax impression. (See the image below.)
The meme does a good job of illustrating how FSIPs interpret the verse, the idea being that since many ancient seals created impressions in the clay that were flat and circular, therefore the text here is depicting a flat, circular world.
If this verse were completely isolated from any context, it might give credence to their claims. But it’s not an isolated verse. It does have a context. There are sentences before and after which constrain and clarify its meaning.
Looking at the text, then, within its context, will we find that it means what they think it means? Or is this an instance of removing a passage from its surrounding words, sentences, or genre that has distorted its intended meaning? Let’s read it carefully in its context. The literary unit is verses 12-15 (here in ESV):
12 Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
13 that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?
14 It is changed like clay under the seal,
and its features stand out like a garment.
15 From the wicked their light is withheld,
and their uplifted arm is broken.
First, we need to recognize that this passage is poetic. Hebrew poetry, like all poetry, is a type of stylized literature that incorporates symbolic and/or figurative language to communicate abstract concepts, ideas, or truths. We know this text is poetry because of the use of synonymous parallelism.[2]
In these verses the Lord poetically answers Job’s complaint (found in chapters 12-14) by asking a series of questions to point out Job’s ignorance and the Lord’s omniscient goodness.
Amid this challenge the Lord asks Job rhetorically, “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its [pronoun (PN) referring to the dawn] place, that it [PN: the dawn] might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it [PN: the earth]?”
Notice the subject in this passage. It’s not the shape of the world but the morning/ dawn. Has Job told the dawn of morning when it’s supposed to come?
The Lord then poetically describes what the coming of the dawn does: it “shakes the wicked out of the earth.”
Back in chapter 24 we read…
13 There are those who rebel against the light,
who are not acquainted with its ways,
and do not stay in its paths.
14 The murderer rises before it is light,
that he may kill the poor and needy,
and in the night he is like a thief.
15 The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight,
saying, ‘No eye will see me’;
and he veils his face.
16 In the dark they dig through houses;
by day they shut themselves up;
they do not know the light.
17 For deep darkness is morning to all of them;
for they are friends with the terrors of deep darkness.
The coming of the light is no friend to the wicked, to those who seek to do evil secretly, under the cover of darkness. As the Lord says in v.15 of our text, “From the wicked their light is withheld, and their uplifted arm is broken.”
And so, when the dawn’s light comes, says commentator Roy B. Zuck, it “causes the wicked, who are active at night (cf. 24:14–17; John 3:19), to hide. It is as if the morning light were shaking them out of a blanket (Job 38:13), causing them to be broken in their power (upraised arm, v. 15; cf. 40:9).”[3]
How does the morning/dawn do this? Verse 14…
“It [PN: the earth] is changed like clay under the seal, and its [PN: the earth’s] features stand out like a garment [by the dawn].”
Zuck continues, “As the sun comes up the earth’s contours become evident and the wicked no longer have darkness, which they call their light, in which to work.”[4]
So, the appearance of the earth (the object) is “changed” by the morning’s (the subject’s) arrival. The light of dawn transforms the appearance of the face of the land (earth), causing its features to “stand out like a garment,” similar to how clay is changed when a seal is pressed into it.
Tremper Longman III summarizes, “What did [Job] know about the arrival of the dawn? Was he in a position to determine the goodness of the arrival of each morning, which brings about a transformation of all the features of the earth as they become visible under the red rays of the early sun?”[5]
So, this passage is a poetic description about the morning/dawn and how the dawn transforms the appearance of the surface of the earth to expose the wicked and cause them to flee.
Now, let’s take notice of a few more details.
(1) The term ‘earth’ (ʾě·rěṣ) means land or surface here, not the whole world.
FSIPs frequently assume the definitions of the terms “world” (tē·ḇēl) and “earth” (ʾě·rěṣ) in the passages they cite, unwittingly perpetrating the semantic range fallacy.
“The semantic range fallacy,” explains Dr. Jason Lisle, “occurs when a reader determines a word’s full semantic range (all the possible meanings that the word might have) and then chooses a definition that suits his preconceived interpretation, rather than allowing context to constrain the meaning. Context determines the meaning of a word — not the reader’s preferences.”[6]
When we look at the Hebrew term ʾě·rěṣ, we find that it has multiple lexical definitions, including “the whole world,” “the dry surface/land,” “ground,” “soil,” “territory,” “region,” “country,” “a group or groups of people that live on the earth,” or “the earthly realm.” Which of these various definitions the author is intending is determined by the immediate literary context.
One cannot simply assume the term ʾě·rěṣ (earth) is talking about “the whole (physical) world.” But this is exactly what the FSIPs often do and have done here. Instead of looking to the immediate context for the author’s intended meaning of “earth” or “world,” they simply assume the definition that best fits their predetermined interpretation.
In the context of our passage in Job 38:12-15, the meaning of ʾě·rěṣ (earth) is abundantly clear. As Job looks out at the horizon as the sun rises, he sees how the light transforms the appearance of the landscape, causing the features of the land to stand out.
As Richard P. Belcher Jr. writes in his commentary on Job, “The dawn light etches multiple designs on the horizon in an array of colors under the beauty of the sun’s first rays. The beauty of the morning light on the earth is like a lump of clay that is turned into a beautiful design beneath a seal or like a beautiful garment covering the earth.”[7]
(2) This passage is filled with metaphorical imagery.
The term metaphor literally means “to carry over.” A metaphor is an image that transfers some of the qualities or properties that belong to one thing over to another thing in a non-literal way.
A “heart of stone” is a metaphor. A heart “melting like wax” or “leaping for joy” is also. Jesus being a lion, a lamb, the gate, the light, water, and bread are metaphors. God being described as a rock, a fortress, a shield, a fire, a hen, and a mama bear; as having wings, arms, eyes, nose, mouth, and feet; as sitting, standing, walking, descending, looking, smelling, swallowing people, and living in a tent are all metaphors. These are all non-literal images meant to convey certain ideas about their subject.
Metaphors are always non-literal images that correspond to something else that is known. A literal interpretation of a metaphor is nonsense.
FSIPs often fail to either recognize or understand metaphorical language when it comes to the passages that they cite. (Interestingly enough, they often do recognize and understand metaphorical language in most other instances.)
The metaphors in this passage include the dawn’s actions, such as “take hold” and “shaking.” The morning/dawn is obviously not a corporeal being with literal hands that can grab hold of and shake anything. And yet humans do understand what it’s like to take hold of the edges of a garment and shake it so that the dirt is removed from the garment.
Therefore, God uses that metaphor of taking hold of the edge of a garment and shaking it out to communicate the effect of the dawn on the wicked. The idea that is “carrying over” is how, like dust particles scatter when a garment is shaken, the wicked scatter when the light of dawn comes.
Kenneth L. Barker notes, “The figure is based on the idea that daylight catches the wicked in the act and disperses them like one who shakes dirt from a blanket. The dawn flashes across the earth from east to west; and this, in the figure, is like seizing it by its edges and shaking it out.”[8]
“Skirts” or “edges of the earth” is also a metaphor. “Skirts” is a play on the garment metaphor because almost all garments had a bottom edge or “skirt” during that time. This is a metaphor for the horizon, the visible edge of the land that the morning sun crests each day. As the light of dawn breaks over the horizon and begins illuminating the countryside, so the wicked flee to their hiding places.
As J.P. Holding comments, “Clearly this verse refers to no more than the visible horizon that the dawn ‘grasps’ as the sun rises. It is phenomenological and poetic in every sense of its expression.”[9]
(3) Notice how this change, this transformation, is described. It’s “changed like clay under the seal.” The action is the focus here. This is in no way attempting to describe the shape of the earth but is a description of how the light illuminates the contours of its surface.
Now, we need a little more historical context here to understand what the poetry is depicting. There were two predominant kinds of seals in the ancient world: flat seals that were pressed into clay (like the one pictured earlier) and cylindrical seals that were rolled over clay (like the ones pictured below). Both impressions caused features of the clay to “stand out like a garment.”
Which kind of ancient seal is the poet referring to? It’s clear once we look at the entire analogy within its context. The light doesn’t just pop into existence at one moment, causing every single feature around us to stand out. Rather, the light of dawn rolls over the surface of the earth, causing the features of the earth to stand out as it does so.
On any clear day at sunrise, you can watch as the light moves steadily over the landscape, its smooth advance looking like it’s rolling slowly toward you, causing more of the details of the landscape to become visibly noticeable, kind of like an ancient cylindrical seal does with clay.
Commentator A. R. Fausset, writes, “As the plastic clay presents the various figures impressed on it by a seal, so the earth, which in the dark was void of all form, when illuminated by the day-spring, presents a variety of forms, hills, valleys, &c. ’Turned‘ (‘turns itself,’ Hebrew) alludes to the rolling cylinder seal, from one to three inches long, such as is found in Babylon, which leaves its impressions on the soft plastic clay, as it is turned about: so the morning light rolling on over the earth.”[10] [emphasis mine]
Verse 14 is a poetically beautiful depiction of how the light of dawn rolls over the land (like a seal rolling over clay), illuminating the topographical features of the land that were, just moments ago, in darkness and causing those features of the land to visibly stand out.
As Steven J. Lawson says about this passage, “The earth is pictured as a document written on a clay tablet. Its surface is changed when a seal is rolled, or impressed, upon it. So it is when the sun rises and the light of day causes the earth’s surface to stand out and appear different.”[11] [emphasis mine]
Neither the shape of the land nor of the whole planet is even a remote thought in this verse.
In Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary: Job, author Thomas A. Robinson recapitulates Job 38:12-15 thus:
12 Hast thou commanded the morning (to succeed the night)
since thy days (since thou wast [sic] born, or, because thou hast seen many days);
and caused the day-spring to know his place (the exact time throughout the year when it should arise);
13 that it might take hold of the ends of the earth (spreading its light from one end of the earth to the other—from the eastern to the western horizon),
that the wicked might be shaken out of it (as no longer able to pursue their deeds of darkness after the morning light has risen)?
14 It (the earth) is turned as clay to the seal (Heb., ‘as clay of the seal,’ as the clay under the impression of the seal, exhibiting forms and appearances which were not visible upon it before);
and they (the objects on the earth’s surface) stand [forth] as a garment (a beautiful, parti-coloured [sic], and variously-figured robe clothing the earth, which during the night was entirely unseen).
15 And from the wicked their light is withholden (these being, as the result of their evil deeds, deprived of the light either by imprisonment or death),
and the high arm (their mighty power, or the arm uplifted for deeds of violence,) shall be (or is) broken” (in consequence of the light exposing their deeds and leading to their detection and punishment, and from courts of justice being in those countries usually held in the morning).[12]
This passage in Job has absolutely nothing to do with the shape of the world but is a poetic depiction of how the light of dawn rolls across the surface of the land, revealing the land’s features. To read a flat-earth depiction into this text is a clear example of contextomy and of a “failure to read the text carefully.” Sadly, the text has taken a back seat to the FSIPs’ need and desire to justify their position and has been twisted to supposedly say something that the author never intended.
And so, the next time you come across an FSIP who quotes this verse, I hope you can echo the sentiment of Inigo Montoya and say, “You keep using that verse. I do not think it means what you think it means,” and then explain to them what it clearly does mean from within its context.
This is just the first of many passages that are regularly cited by FSIPs. In the next article we’ll cover the FSIPs’ frequent citations of Psalms 93:1, 96:10 (cf. 1 Chronicles 16:30), 104:5 and the phrase “never be moved.”
[1] Lisle, J. 2022. Keeping Faith in an Age of Reason: Refuting Alleged Bible Contradictions (p. 12). Green Forest, AR: Master Books.
[2] Parallelism is the key characteristic in identifying Hebrew poetry. Parallelism is simply a correspondence between the subunits of a line.
[3] Walvoord, J. F. and R. B. Zuck. 1985. The Bible Knowledge Commentary (Old Testament) (p. 767). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[4] Ibid., 767.
[5] Konkel, A. H. and T. Longman III. 2006. Job, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs (Cornerstone Biblical Commentary) (p. 221). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.
[6] Lisle, J. 2022. Keeping Faith in an Age of Reason: Refuting Alleged Bible Contradictions (p. 12). Green Forest, AR: Master Books.
[7] Belcher, R. P. Jr. 2017. Job: The Mystery of Suffering and God’s Sovereignty (Focus on the Bible) (p. 286). Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus.
[8] Barker, K. L. and J. R. Kohlenberger III. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Abridged Edition: Old Testament (p. 784). Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House.
[9] Holding, J. P. 2000. Is the ‘erets (earth) flat? Journal of Creation 14 (December): 51-54. https://creation.com/is-the-erets-earth-flat
[10] Jamieson, R., et al. 1984. A Commentary: Critical, Experimental, and Practical on the Old and New Testaments (vol. III, p. 93). London: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
[11] Lawson, S. J. 2005. Job: Holman Old Testament Commentary, edited by Max Anders (p. 329). Nashville: B&H Publishing Group.
[12] Robinson, T. 1892. The Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary: Job (p. 247). New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.