He stretcheth out the north - This whole passage is particularly interesting as giving a view of the cosmology which prevailed in those early times. Indeed, as has been already remarked, this poem, apart from every other consideration, is of great value for disclosing to us the prevailing views on the subject of astronomy, geography, and many of the arts, at a much earlier period than we have an account of them elsewhere. The word north here denotes the heavens as they appear to revolve around the pole, and which seem to be stretched out as a curtain. The heavens are often represented as a veil, an expanse, a curtain, or a tent; see Isaiah 34:4, note; Isaiah 40:22, note.
Over the empty place - על־תהוּ ‛al-tôhû, “Upon emptiness, or nothing.” That is, without anything to support it. The word used here (תהוּ tôhû) is one of those employed Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was wlthout form and void.” But it seems here to mean emptiness, nothing. The north is stretched out and sustained by the mere power of God.
And hangeth the earth upon nothing. - It has nothing to support it. So Milton:
“And earth self-balaneed from her center hung.”
There is no certain evidence here that Job was acquainted with the globular form of the earth, and with its diurnal and annual revolutions. But it is clear that he regarded it as not resting on any foundation or support; as lying on the vacant air, and kept there by the power of God. The Chaldee paraphrasist, in order to explain this, as that Paraphrase often does, adds the word waters. “He hangeth the earth מיא עלוי upon the waters, with no one to sustain it.” The sentiment here expressed by Job was probably the common opinion of his time. It occurs also in Lucretius:
Terraque ut in media mundi regionne quieseat
Evallescere paullatim, et decrescere, pondus
Convenit; atque aliam naturam subter habere,
Et ineunte aevo conjunctam atque uniter aptam
Partibus aeriis mundi, quibus insita vivit
Propterea, non est oneri, neque deprimit auras;
Ut sua quoique homini nullo sunt pondere membra,
Nec caput est oneri collo, nec denique totum
Corporus in pedibus pondus sentimus inesse.
v. 535.
In this passage the sense is, that the earth is self-sustained; that it is no burden, or that no one part is burdensome to another - as in man the limbs are not burdensome, the head is not heavy, nor the whole frame burdensome to the feet. So, again, Lucretius says, ii. 602:
Hanc, veteres Grajum docti cecinere poetae,
Aeris in spatio magnam pendere -
Tellurem, neque posse in terra sistere terram.
- “In ether poised she hangs,
Unpropt by earth beneath.”
So Ovid says:
Ponderibus librata suis.
Self-poised and self balanced.
And again, Fastor, vi. 269:
Terra pilae similis, nullo fulcimine nixa,
Aere subjecto tam grave pendet onus.
From passages like this occurring occasionally in the Classical writers, it is evident that the true figure of the earth had early engaged the attention of people, and that occasionally the truth on this subject was before their minds, though it was neither worked into a system nor sustained then by suffient evidence to make it an article of established belief The description here given is appropriate now; and had Job understood all that is now known of astronomy, his language would have been appropriate to express just conceptions of the greatness and majesty of God. It is proof of amazing power and greatness that he has thus “hung” the earth, the planets, the vast sun himself, upon nothing, and that by his own power he sustains and governs all.