Does Job 37:10 Say the Seas are Flat, Not Curved?

By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened.
Job 37:10 KJV

Once more for the those seated in the mezzanine, Job was not written in English. I'm not sure it would matter if it was, though, because the King James Version is more-or-less written in modern English, but its vocabulary might be too challenging for those who think this verse says the seas are flat.

The Hebrew word translated as "is straitened" in Job 37:10 is bamutzak (במוצק). I don't have a problem with that. It's a perfectly acceptable translation. The problem is that some people think it says "straightened" rather than "straitened".

To be fair, the words are homonyms (they sound alike), but they have different etymologies. Strait means "a narrow, confined place" and comes from the Old French word estroit (Online Etymology Dictionary). Straight, on the other hand, means "not bent or curved" and comes from the Old English streht (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Job 37:10 is not saying that the waters are flat (straightened), but that the waters are confined (straitened) within their boundaries, i.e. shorelines. It's acknowledgint that God separated the water from the land in Genesis 1:9 and is completely irrelevant to the flatearth debate.

P.S. This verse isn't saying that frost literally comes out of God's mouth either.

Triple Parallelism in a Chiasm in Genesis 9:12-17

 

·         V12 - This is the sign of the covenant between me and you and all living creatures with you

o   V13 - Set bow in the cloud

§  Sign of the covenant between me and the earth

o   V14 - When I bring clouds and bow is seen

§  V15 - I will remember my covenant between me, you, and all kinds of living flesh

o   V16 - When the bow is in the clouds and seen

§  I will remember the covenant between God and all kinds of living flesh on the earth

·         V17 - This is the sign of the covenant between me and all flesh on the earth

A Timeline of Noah's Flood

The Genesis account of Noah's Flood gives dates for some events and timelines for others. If you take the time to reconcile all of these figures, you can learn some important things about how the Bible is structured and how it treats the passage of time.

Event	Reference	Text Date/Time Lapse	Calendar Date
Enters Ark	Genesis 7:1-10	10th of Second	10 Cheshvan or 10 Iyyar
Rains begin	Genesis 7:11	17th of Second	17 Cheshvan or 17 Iyyar
Rains stop	Genesis 7:17	40 days	~29 Kislev or 29 Sivan
Waters began to abate	Genesis 7:24, 8:03	150 days	~17 Nisan or 17 Tishrei
Ark on Ararat	Genesis 8:04	17th of Seventh	17 Nisan or 17 Tishrei
Mountain tops seen	Genesis 8:05	1st of Tenth	1 Tammuz or 1 Tevet
Raven sent	Genesis 8:6-7	40 days	~10 Av or 10 Shevat
Dove sent/returns	Genesis 8:8-9	0 days
Dove sent/leaf	Genesis 8:10-11	7 days	~17 Av or 17 Shevat
Dove sent/no return	Genesis 8:12	7 days	~24 Av or 24 Shevat
Waters dried	Genesis 8:13	1st of First	1 Tishrei or 1 Nisan
Earth dried	Genesis 8:14	27th of Second	27 Cheshvan or 27 Iyyar

Some observations from this data:

A lunar month is 28-29 days, depending on the relative positions of the earth, the moon, and the sun. This means that the only way for the dates in the text to work is if the 40 days of rain in 7:17 are included in the 150 days of the water prevailing in 7:24, ending in the last half of the month of Nisan (or Tishrei if the "first month" is meant to refer to Nisan instead of Tishrei). 

The dates of some events have to be approximated for two reasons.

First, since a lunar month is only 28-29 days, it is impossible to get 150 days between the 17th day of the Second month (Cheshvan) and the 17th day of the Seventh month (Nisan). That would be 145-147 days. Then from the 17th of Nisan to the 1st of Tishrei is actually about 157-160 days. The two periods combined are close to the specified 300 days, but the text actually says that each period was 150 days. Clearly the author was rounding the numbers to a neat 150 and didn't mean for them to be understood as mathematically exact.

Second, counts of days are frequently rounded in Scripture. "Forty days" is rarely meant to be a literal and exact 40 days, but some period of time greater than one month and less than two. In English today we might say "several weeks" or "a month and a half" to mean the same thing, when we almost never have an exact count of days in mind. 

Whether the flood began in the month of Cheshvan or in the month of Iyyar depends on what is meant by the "first month", "seventh month", etc. When Genesis was first written, the Jewish people hadn't yet adopted the Babylonian names for the months, so they were only numbered. The Babylonians and Israelites both had two primary new years days, 1 Nisan and 1 Tishrei, for counting different annual cycles. However, in Exodus 12:2, God told Israel that they must begin counting Nisan as the first month of the year. This implies that they weren't doing so before and 1 Tishrei had been the primary new years day up until the Exodus from Egypt. Therefore, I prefer the traditional reconning of the start and end of the Flood in the Fall rather than the Spring.

The waters drying from the face of the earth on the first day of Tishrei, also known as the Feast of Trumpets or Yom Teruah, is appropriate, because that day announces the coming day of liberation and restoration on Yom Kippur, the tenth day of Tishrei.

The Biblical Symbolism of Seventy

Bullinger's Number in Scripture says that the number 70 "signifies perfect spiritual order carried out with all spiritual power and significance" because it is 7 (spiritual perfection) multiplied by 10 (order). I believe he's correct, but possibly not in the precise way that he thought. Look at these 70s:

• 70 nations of Genesis 10
• 70 persons of the house of Jacob in Genesis 46:27
• 70 days of mourning by the Egyptians for Jacob in Genesis 50:3
• 70 anointed elders of Israel in Numbers 11
• 70 palm trees in Numbers 33:9
• 70 kings subdued by Adoni-bezek in Judges 1:7
• 70 sons of Gideon in Judges 8:30
• 70 silver paid to Abimelech to depose the sons of Gideon in Judges 9:4
• 70 sons of Abdon the judge in Judges 12:14
• 70 men struck by God for mishandling the Ark in 1 Samuel 6:19
• 70 sons of Ahab in Samaria in 2 Kings 10
• 70 Shemitot not observed by Israel in 2 Chronicles 36:21
• 70 years of life in Psalm 90:10
• 70 years that Tyre will be forgotten in Isaiah 23
• 70 years for the days of a king in Isaiah 23:15
• 70 years to serve the king of Babylon in Jeremiah 25
• 70 elders of Israel in Ezekiel 8:11
• 70 cubits for the building wall in Ezekiel 41:12
• 70 years of exile in Daniel 9:2
• 70 weeks of judgment in Daniel 9:24
• 70 years of judgment in Zechariah 1:12 and 7:5
• 70 disciples sent out by Yeshua in Luke 10

I see two common themes in almost all of these instances, and they do seem to be associated with divine order imposed on the affairs of mankind:

First, seventy represents the delegation of authority. God delegated authority to the 70 elders of Israel, while judges and kings delegated authority to their 70 sons, and Yeshua delegated authority to 70 disciples. Several times, God assigned one people to punish another for a period of 70 years or 70 weeks, effectively delegating his authority for a period of 70 units of time rather than to 70 individuals.

Second, seventy represents the transformation of patriarchs into nations. Noah became 70 nations in Genesis 10 and Jacob grew from one man who left Canaan to four wives who bore twelve sons and finally to seventy descendants who entered Egypt. This might even constitute another kind of delegation.

Of course, these two possibilities don't explain every instance of the number seventy. For example, what are the 70 cubits measured in Ezekiel 41:12? A metaphor of the 70 elders, perhaps?

Chiasm in the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)

• 10:22-32 - Descendants of Shem
• 11:1 – One language and the people migrated together
• 11:3-4 – Let us make bricks (laban, which is lamed-bet-nun) and build a city so we won’t be dispersed
• 11:5 – God came down.
• 11:6 – God saw their pride and how it would progress
• 11:7a – God came down.
• 11:7b-8 – Let us confuse (v’nablah, which contains the root nun-bet-lamed) their language so they will be dispersed and stop building the city.
• 11:9 – Many languages and the people scattered
• 11:10-26 - Descendants of Shem

An alternative arrangement of this chiasm, which I kind of like better:

• 10:22-32 - Descendants of Shem
• 11:1-2 - One language and the people migrated together
• 11:3 - The people determined to build
• 11:4 - Then they said, "Come, let us..."
• 11:4 - Build a city, become great, remain united
• 11:5 - YHVH came down to witness their city and tower
• 11:6 - People united, will become great, do anything
• 11:7 - "Come, let us..."
• 11:7-8 - Stop the people from building
• 11:9 - Confuse the language and scatter the people
• 11:10-26 - Descendants of Shem

Common worship, language, and culture can be great unifying forces. Nimrod and the Babylonians were aware of this and tried to leverage it, but they aren't enough. The Tower of Babel was a pre-figured counterfeit of the Temple of Jerusalem. The only truly worthy and enduring unifying force is the true worship of the only true God.

Update 2023-10-20. The chiasm extends earlier into chapter 10 and to the end of chapter 11, encompassing the genealogy of Shem, at the very least. I've updated the diagrams above to show this.

HT: Tim Hegg at TorahResource.

For more on chiasms--including how to identify, map, and interpret them--check out The Chiasm Course!

A Chiasm in Genesis 7:20-24 on the Death of All Life

The Flood was like a drastic, last-ditch medical therapy that kills off a disease, but nearly kills the patient in the process. 

Throughout Scripture, states of uncleanness can only be remedied by repentance, water, and time. Since there was no repentance coming from the people who lived before the Flood, God repented himself from having made them, and then he sent water and time to cleanse the earth from the uncleanness of their depravity.

The chiasm in this passage separates the death of all living things from the rest of the passage by two literary walls of water. The first wall is measured by depth, the second by time.

For more on chiasms--including how to identify, map, and interpret them--check out The Chiasm Course!

Thematic Connections between the Flood and Sodom

Tony Robinson has a number of great teachings based on thematic connections between different stories in the Bible. In this video, he illustrates a parallelism between Genesis 6:9-9:23 on one side and Genesis 18:23-19:37 on the other. Be sure to give him a thumbs up and share the video.

Video from Tony Robinson:

What Was Ham's Sin and Why Was Canaan Cursed

Here is the same parallelism graphically illustrated:

...and again in text for the search engines:

A: 6:9 - Noah was the only righteous man in a wicked generation.
    B: 6:13-22 - God will destroy the earth because of its violence
        C: 7:3-16 - Noah and family enter the ark to save their lives
            D: 7:17-24 - All life destroyed in the flood and rain
                E: 8:1 - People and animals saved because God remembered Noah
                    F: 8:4 - Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat
                        G: 9:20-23 - Ham committed a sexual sin while Noah was drunk
A: 18:23-24 - Abraham asks, Would you destroy the righteous with the wicked?
    B: 19:13 - God will destroy Sodom because of the outcry against it
        C: 19:14-22 - Lot and family leaves the city to save their lives
            D: 19:23-28 - All people of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by sulfur rain
                E: 19:29 - Lot and family are saved because God remembered Abraham
                    F: 19:30 - Lot and daughters settled on the mountain above Zohar
                        G: 19:31-37 - Lot's daughters had sex with him while he was drunk

This parallelism shows that Ham's sin was almost certainly sexual in nature, but why would Noah curse Ham's son instead of Ham himself? I think the two most likely explanations are that 1) Ham permanently broke the relationship of Noah with one of his sons, so Noah's curse against Canaan broke the relationship between Ham and one of his sons or that 2) Ham's sin was actually against his own mother, and Canaan was the offspring of that sin, much as Lot's daughters gave birth to Moab and Ammon through their sin.

A Chiasm in Genesis 9 around Eating Blood

A chiasm in Genesis 9 surrounds death and the abuse of life with promises of life and blessing. Perhaps the purpose of this arrangement is to say that, if you want to live a long, productive life with lots of children and joy in the the things that God has given you, start by respecting those gifts as well as the people around you.

• V1 – Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth
• V2 – All moving things delivered into the hand of man
• V3 – All living things given to man
• V4 – Don’t eat blood
• V5 – God requires a reckoning for the life of man
• V6 – Man delivered into the hands of man
• V7 – Be fruitful and multiply, increase in the earth

Or to put it in more narrative terms...

"Go fill the world so you can manage it. To help you, I've given you these resources, but if anyone takes a life that I have not put under your authority, you are to take his life. Did you hear me? I'm giving you authority over all of these lives, but if any of you go beyond that, I will revoke your authority even over your own life. Don't bring blood guilt on yourselves, whether by murder of another human or by eating the blood of an animal." -God

For more on chiasms--including how to identify, map, and interpret them--check out The Chiasm Course!

Noach - A Man Worth Following

Genesis 6:18

…thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. Genesis does not describe Noah's family as especially righteous, although it is reasonable to believe that they were. (With the possible exception of Ham, of course. See Genesis 9:22-27.) The families of righteous men tend to be more righteous than the families of unrighteous men. The most convincing evidence of the character of Noah's family, however, is that they went along with his plan to build a giant boat contrary to common sense. They trusted Noah's judgment enough to stick by his side through one hundred years of ridicule and alienation. Most women today would leave their husband if he so much as quit his job to start a prison ministry or a homeless shelter. It would be almost unthinkable to stay with him while he gave up everything to pursue an unprecedented project with no conceivable benefit. How many women would even believe their husbands had heard from God, let alone support him in carrying out God's instructions? I do not mean to blame women. How many men could inspire their wives and children to such devotion? What kind of man must Noah have been to inspire such loyalty in his wife and to have brought up such children?

I should also mention that Noah is the second verifiably monogamous man mentioned in Scripture. The first monogamist introduced death into the world, while the second presided over death's ultimate implementation. Both men were righteous overall, but their monogamy seems to be more of a practical consideration than anything else. Adam could not have two wives because polygamy was not to be the standard pattern for all families. Noah could not have two wives for two reasons: there were too few good women in the world, and he only took with him on the ark what was necessary for regeneration.

Noah: A Man of the Soil

Genesis 9:20 "Noah became a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard."

Wherever men live, they are men of the soil. So few of us exist the way we were intended, but we always find a way of bringing green back into our lives. We plant grass around our houses, hang plants from our apartment ceilings, put flowers in our windows, or grow vegetables in our back yards. Somehow, someway, we manage to maintain our connection to the soil. Only in the most dysfunctional and unhappy societies is everything consumed by brick and concrete.

Update October 10, 2007: Yesterday I was reading on someone else's blog about the parallels between Noah's ark and Moses' ark. I don't remember him mentioning this one. Noah's ark was to be pitched inside and out. The Hebrew word used for "pitch" is kopher, which means to cover something. The Ark of the Covenant was topped by the mercy seat. The Hebrew word translated as "mercy seat" is kapporeth, which comes from kopher and means "lid or cover." (I have no idea why it was translated as "mercy seat.") The pitch on Noah's ark kept its inhabitants from drowning in the water that was the result of a world of sin. Without that pitch, the boat would have leaked and eventually sunk. The cover on the Ark of the Covenant represents the Messiah seated between two angels. Without him, the spiritual death that results from our world of sin would overwhelm us. It is only by the pitch of his blood, inside and out, that we are saved from ultimate destruction.