What Does Job 26:7 Mean in the King James?
He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The north is stretched over emptiness while the earth hangs over no thing, making absence part of the verse’s cosmic architecture.
THE MEANING
You inhabit a world the verse describes as stretched across emptiness, with the earth suspended above no thing. Its image holds emptiness and ordered extension together: no visible foundation appears, yet the earth is still described as hanging in place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The earth must rest on a visible material foundation to be suspended.
THE ROOT
נֹטֶה
noteh
GROWS FROM
נטה
natah
to stretch out, extend, or incline
“stretcheth” in this verse is noteh. The root holds extension and inclination together: the north is not merely located over emptiness; it is stretched across it. Related words carry that movement into an extended staff and a downward direction, giving the verse a sense of space shaped by extension.
ALSO GROWS
matteh: staff, rod; also tribe
מַטֶּה
A staff is a concrete extension of the root’s movement; the same root describes the north stretched over emptiness.
mattah: downward, below
מַטָּה
This branch gives the root a direction of inclination, adding spatial orientation to the image of the earth suspended over nothing.
THE PATTERN
The world’s visible order is pictured as extending into spaces without visible support, while its shaping is attributed to God.
Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: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:Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.THE THREAD
Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea.Job 9:8 repeats the Hebrew root נטה (natah, stretch out) in the same form, this time with the heavens as its object. It pairs that extension with treading on the waves, opening Job 26:7’s image of emptiness into a motion across sky and sea.
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