"Isaiah 22:18 He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house."
Ball - means sphere. If Isaiah meant ball or sphere in Isaiah 40:22, I think he'd have used the same word. As he didn't, I think he meant to describe a circle, which is flat.
"Isaiah 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:"
Circle - means flat.
Contextual Application: chûwg, mᵉchûwgâh, têbêl, dûwr, kikkâr, kârar, machăbath, tachath.
Contents:
INTRODUCTION
PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
SUMMARY
CONCLUSION
BONUS: My Challenge To Flat Earthers
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INTRODUCTION
This refutation is in response to an old article from Robert J. Schadewald entitled "The Flat Earth Bible," as well as liberal scholars like Rob Skiba and others who claim if Isaiah wanted to use a word meaning globe in Isaiah 40:22, he would have used the Hebrew word duwr. This, of course, is not true as this presentation will absolutely prove.
This will be a short lesson in how to read a lexicon and understand what Hebrew words are applicable to a context. The main focus is on Isaiah 40:22 but other globe earth verses which share the same contextual application will also be featured.
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PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
Process of Elimination: Which words and verses do not fit the context of the earth or it's shape?
1. "The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house" ( H4230: מְחוּגָה mᵉchûwgâh, Isaiah 44:13 -- KJV).
2. "He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end" (Strong's H2328: חוּג chûwg; Job 26:10 -- KJV).
3. "That he sytteth vpon the circle of the worlde, and that al the inhabytours of the worlde are in comparison of him, but as greshoppers: That he spredeth out the heauens as a coueryng, that he stretcheth them out, as a tent to dwell in" (Strong's H2329: חוּג chûwg, Isaiah 40:22 -- 1537 Matthew's Bible).
4. "Yea euen the Lorde of hoastes that with his power made the earth, with his wisdome prepared the round world, and with his discretion spread out the heauens" (Strong's H8398: תֵּבֵל têbêl Jeremiah 51:15 -- 1568 Bishop's Bible).
"But as for our God he made the earth with his power, and with his wisdome doth he order the whole compasse of the worlde, with his discretion hath he spread out the heauens" (Strong's H8398:תֵּבֵל têbêl, Jeremiah 10:12 -- 1568 Bishop's Bible).
"As for the rounde compase of his worlde, I make it ioyfull: for my delyte is to be among the chyldren of men" (Strong's H8398: תֵּבֵל têbêl, Proverbs 8:31 -- 1537 Matthew's Bible).
5. "He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house" (Strong's H1754: דּוּר dûwr, Isaiah 22:14 -- KJV).
"And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee" (Strong's H1754: דּוּר dûwr, Isaiah 29:3 -- KJV).
"Take the choice of the flock, and burn also the bones under it, and make it boil well, and let them seethe the bones of it therein" (Strong's H1754: דּוּר dûwr, Ezekiel 24:5 -- KJV).
The answer here is #1 and #5. Neither word is ever used to describe anything about the earth. The two words mᵉchûwgâh and dûwr are not even an viable options applicable use for the shape of the earth. While duwr does carry a meaning of ball, and the shape of a ball is comparable to the shape of the earth, the word is never used to describe the earth in any way. Flat earthers would claim this is exactly their argument. But they don't seem to understand that duwr just isn't a viable option and therefore Isaiah would not consider a word that has no association to a context where God's creation of the whole earth is featured.
Strong's H3603 כִּכָּר kikkâr would be a better option than dûwr because it does presumably carry the meaning of "round, circle, globe." Yet here again this is a word that appears 68x in the Old Testament but never once to describe the whole earth. So if flat earthers claim dûwr would have been better, or kikkâr would have been better choices for globe, why is it that together these two words, that make up 51 verses, never once mentions the earth? This is because the two words do not apply to God's creation of the earth and/or His dominion over its inhabitants. The words used to describe God's creation and dominion over the whole earth are chûwg & têbêl. These two words are applicable to the earth's globular shape. Other words, like the root word for kikkâr -- Strong's H3769 כָּרַר kârar -- which means "whirl" or "move in a circle," are not viable options for Isaiah either for Isaiah 40:22 because it is never used to showcase God's creation over the whole earth, nor is it ever used to describe the earth in any way. So kârar, kikkâr, mᵉchûwgâh and dûwr are not selected because they simply do not apply to God's creation of the earth whether one's argues it is a flat or round. Isaiah chose the correct word that is always used to describe God's creation and dominion of earth.
AGAIN, kârar, kikkâr, mᵉchûwgâh and dûwr has no applicable connection to the earth or God's creation of it, and therefore are eliminated from being a viable option.
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SUMMARY:
1. Strong's H4230 mᵉchûwgâh is used only 1x and was not used to describe the shape of the earth or the earth at all.
2. Strong's H2328 chûwg is used 1x to describe the earth.
3. Strong's H2329 chûwg is used 3x but only 1x to describe the entire earth, with the other two verses used to describe the arch or vault (curvature) of the sky.
4. Strong's H8398 têbêl is used 36x and 12x to describe the fullness of the earth and its inhabitants. I only used 3 examples out of 12 here to keep it simple and easy.
5. Strong's H1754 dûwr (aka, dur) is used 3x and never to describe the earth.
6. Strong's H3603 כִּכָּר kikkâr is used 68x in the OT but never once to describe the earth.
7. Strong's H3769 כָּרַר kârar is used 2x and not once to describe the earth.
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CONCLUSION:
Hebrew is the context driven language. Neither H4230 mᵉchûwgâh or H1754 dûwr are ever used once to describe the earth. Together they make up 4 verses in the entire Bible. If these words were supposed to be used to describe the earth in any manner then they would of been used at least 1x out of 4 to do so. Likewise with kârar & kikkâr, which are used 70x and never once in connection to the whole earth.
But you will noticed how H2328--H2329 chûwg and H8398 têbêl share the same contextual application with only minor differences in overall usage. But when applied to the earth they both describe an earth which is compassing, round, circular, full, abiding by the boundary of light and darkness as we would expect from a spherical earth. Also note that Job 26:7 also indicates a spherical earth since there is no true north on a flat disc. The flat earth model also has the earth held up by literal pillars which contradicts Job 26:7.
The Tyndale influenced Bibles translate têbêl as "round world" or "round compass" or "whole compass of the world." These renderings give meaning to H2328 and a compassing world at the boundary of light and darkness (a globe). Note that têbêl & chûwg also share similar context in verses like Prov.8:31, Isaiah 40:22, Jeremiah 10:12 and Jeremiah 51:14 as the following check list shows:
"round world" (Jer.51:15), "circle of the earth" (Isaiah 40:22), and "whole compass of the world (Jer.10:12).
"spread out the heavens" (Isaiah 40:22; Jer.10:12, 51:15).
Isaiah 40:22 shares another characteristic with Proverbs 8:31,
"circle of the earth" (Isa.40:22); "round compass of his world" -- in both cases the earth is the Lord's and attributed to His Dominion and Rule from creation.
"inhabitants of the world" (Isa.40:22), "children of men" (Prov.8:31).
So the connection between the shape of the earth, the spreading out of the heavens, and the inhabitants therein (Ps.89:11), are clearly seen. TWOT even goes further to define têbêl,
TWOT 835h תֵּבֵל têbêl:
"First, the noun is employed to represent the global mass called earth."
And again it says:
"In several passages the sense of têbêl as the globular earth in combination with its inhabitants is clearly observed."
So both têbêl and chûwg share a common application.
So why not use H4230 mᵉchûwgâh or H1754 dûwr?
Well the answer is pretty obvious that they are not good word choices which explains why Isaiah used neither word in Isa.40:22. The word H1754 dûwr isn't even an applicable option to use to describe earth. Maybe from a modern English speaking perspective it is...but not in Hebrew.
Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon does not contradict meaning. H2328 does not mean 2D flat circle while H2329 means sphere. That is not how these definitions were meant to be understood. They both teach a 3D circle that compasses around at the boundary of day and night.
Lastly, here is 4th century Bishop Ambrose reading from Isaiah 40:22.
"And further on: 'Who sitteth upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts, who stretcheth out the heavens as an arch?' Who, then, ventures to put his knowledge in the same plane with that of God?” (St.Ambrose, "Hexameron" The Fathers Of The Church series translated by John J. Savage, p.231).
The word translated globe comes from the Latin word gyrus which means "round, globus, orbis, circulus, circlus, circes."
https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/t...6pT2KqCkrM8Do1NxuTzlZ5QKRq_U17uhrh9Ut0JVvIJdI
The word "circle" is an old poetic word which at one time was applicable to globe. But in the 21st century the English word "circle" does tend to carry a 2D flat meaning. But its not the strict 21st century definition of "circle" that is most relevant here. Its how it was understood in ancient times that makes the definition relevant. When the Bible is treated with a lack of respect and held down to a rigid English meaning, the true meaning of Hebrew words is lost in translation. The most lost and forgotten Hebrew word of the Bible is têbêl. The meaning of that word has been completely blotted out of our Bibles since 1560. Every Bible since the 1560 Geneva Bible (for the exception of the 1568 Bishop's Bible and 1876 Julia E Smith Bible) have completely mistranslated têbêl. And with têbêl being mistranslated for some 500 years, we know battle over the meaning of chûwg which, for a time, being translated as "circle" was applicable to the spherical shape of the earth. But without têbêl we are left in a stalemate argument which always tends to favor the Biblical skeptic. Though it can be reasonably argued that Isaiah 40:22 should be translated to globe in all modern translations as the Douay-Rheims Bible translated it:
"It is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: he that stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in."
This, of course, was a translation of Jerome's Latin Vulgate which has:
"qui sedet super gyrum terrae et habitatores eius sunt quasi lucustae qui extendit velut nihilum caelos et expandit eos sicut tabernaculum ad inhabitandum"
The words "gyrum terrae" is how we get "globe of the earth." This is how chuwg translated into Latin in the late 4th century -- over 1000 years before the era of modern science!
https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/t...6pT2KqCkrM8Do1NxuTzlZ5QKRq_U17uhrh9Ut0JVvIJdI
If chuwg was meant to be understood as a 2D flat circle as it is understood in 21st century English, then all the early church fathers would have been proud flat earthers! But as the verdict stands: the early church fathers, as early as the 1st century, were reading globe earth from their Hebrew manuscripts.
2000 years of theology can't go wrong.
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BONUS: My Challenge To Flat Earthers
I have a question for flat earthers: Why didn’t Isaiah use the Hebrew word “machabath” (Strong’s H4227)?
The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible,
"4227. machabath, makh-ab-ath'; from the same as 2281; a pan for baking in:--pan [5x]. See TWOT -- 600b; BDB -- 292b, 561d”
TWOT 600b: “flat plate, pan, or griddle (e.g. Lev. 2:5; 6:14; Ezk 4:3)”.
Genesis 1:1 (NASB)
Why can’t liberal scholars find the right word which better describes their flat plate model they designated for the Biblical view of the earth? Surely this word would have been better than chuwg? It could have been translated “...the pan of the earth” or “the griddle of the earth" or "the plate of the earth." But it wasn't. But there is another word that means flat.
Strong’s H8478 is found in Joshua 6:5, 20; which is the Hebrew word tachath which was used to describe the walls of Jericho “that the wall fell down flat “ (Joshua 6:20). The word translated flat is tachath.
Genesis 1:1 (KJV)
So why wasn’t another Hebrew word which means flat used in Isaiah 40:22? Why couldn’t the verse just literally translate “the flatness of the earth”? Surely if the earth was flat and plate shaped Isaiah would have used the right word to communicate that message. The word translated circle does not mean flat as the earth is circular in shape. The definition of round also carries a broad meaning in English.
Conclusion. If Isaiah wanted to use dur (Strong's H1754) instead of chuwg he would have. When we go into the Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon we may see the reason why Isaiah chose chuwg over dur.
Here is the Gesenius' definition of dur
Genesis 1:1 (KJV)
Here is the Gesenius' definition of chuwg: "חוּג m. a circle, sphere, used of the arch or vault of the sky, Pro.8:27; Job 22:14; of the world, Isa.40:22."
Genesis 1:1 (KJV)
The word chuwg means circle, sphere which is a 3D circle. The word also means compass which is what a 3D circle does.
Compass vs Encompass - What's the difference?
The English word "compass" applied to the shape of the earth.
Proverbs 8:31,
"As for the rounde compasse of this worlde I make it ioyfull: for my delite is to be among the chyldren of men" (1568 Bishop's Bible).
Compared with:
"He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end" (Job 26:10, KVJ).
"He hath compased the waters with certayne boundes vntill the daye & nyght come to an ende" (Job 26:10, 1539 Great Bible).
Proverbs 8:31 uses the Hebrew word תֵּבֵל têbêl which is also used to describe the shape of the earth which, like חוּג chûwg, means the compassing fullness of the globe.
