Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Title: Re: Isaiah 40:22

Dear John,

I think the comments in this thread have failed to address the main part of your question, so I will give some comments.

The central sense the word heth waw gimel is a geometric circle, and this is evidently the sense in Isaiah 40:22.

As to the term aleph resh sade, it is of paramount importance to keep in mind that word meaning is not found in lexicons and word books, which just contain glosses, but word meaning is found in the minds of living people, those who spoke Hebrew in ancient times.

The letters of a Hebrew (or English) word have no intrinsic meaning, but they signal a concept (or sometimes two or more concepts) in the minds of native speakers. The context in which a word occurs does not generate new meaning, but helps the reader to understand which part of the concept the writer wanted to make visible. The word in question can refer to a particular area inhabited by a nation, a smaller part of this area, or to the whole earth.

So, which part of the concept signaled by aleph resh sade does the author of Isaiah 40:22 make visible? The setting is heaven and earth and their creation, and God is enthroned above the circle of the earth. The sense can hardly be anything  but the planet earth.

Do I hear another question behind your written question, namely, did the writer of the chapter imply that the earth is a sphere? The question is somewhat anachronistic, but it can be rephrased. If your physician suspects that you have experienced a small bleeding inside your brain and a CT or MR picture is taken, and it shows a small bright spot, the physician will not say: "This finding proves that you have had a bleeding." But the physician will say: "This finding conforms with our suspection that you have had a bleeding." So the question can be rephrased thus: "Do the words of Isaiah conform with the modern view of a spherical earth?" To this question the answer is yes.

To illustrate the case further, we can take a look at 40:26-28. These words conforms with the first and second laws of thermodynamics, which are two of the most fundamental laws of nature. The first law tells about the constancy of energy an mass, energy can be transformed into mass, vice versa, but energy/mass cannot destroyed, so the amount is constant. The second law tells that the total amount of usable energy will allways decrease until equilibrium is reached.

The words of Isaiah about the eternal God whose power/energy is the cause of the universe conforms well with law I (energy can be turned into matter - energy is eternal). The words about the creation of the universe (it had a beginning) conforms well with law II. If the universe was eternal, equilibrium had already been reached and radioactive material and and temperature differences would not have existed in the universe. While the words of Isaiah conforms with the two laws, he did not know about these laws or about the equation E=mc2, which can be an _expression_ of law I.

My conclusion is that we should not try to read modern science into the Bible, but neither should we read mythology into it if that is not warranted. A more balanced approach is to ask whether particular words conform with or contradict fundamental data.

Regards

Rolf

Rolf Furuli

University of Oslo

> How is the _expression_ "circle of
> the earth" to be viewed based on the the
> original Hebrew word "chuwg"
> as found at Isaiah 40:22