Tag Archives: Job 9:6

Job 9:5–10

Cosmic Geography

The ancient Israelites shared many common cosmological (dealing with the structure of the cosmos) and cosmogonic (dealing with the origin of the cosmos) beliefs with the ancient Near Eastern world, although for them there was only one Creator. According to the Hebrew Bible, the cosmos consists of heaven, earth, underworld and sea. In both Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought, the world was understood as a disk resting on the primeval waters. Most people saw their own place as in the centre, with the other countries on the periphery. Above was the sky, studded with stars, which were thought to be engraved in the solid sky.

Job 9:6 indicates that the earth rests on pillars, as does Ps 75:3 (cf. foundations/footings in 1Sa 2:8; 2Sa 22:16; Job 38:4, 6; Ps 18:15; 82:5 [also shaken]; 104:5). In Job 26:11, the pillars of the heavens quake. God shakes the heavens, earth, dry land and sea (Hag 2:6). On a Babylonian kudurru (boundary stone), which might depict the world, a large pillar is depicted that undergirds the cosmos. Throughout the Bible and the ancient Near East, what is most important is the role of the gods in the operation of the cosmos. This is generally expressed in relation to the way they viewed the world around them (cosmic geography). In Job, God controls the sun and makes the stars (Job 9:6–9). God stretches out the heavens (Job 26:7; cf. Ps 104:2; Isa 40:22) and treads on the waves of the sea (Job 9:8). In the Babylonian creation epic, the god Marduk creates and destroys the constellation to indicate his power. After defeating Tiamat, he splits her in two; half of her he sets up and makes into a cover — ​heaven, which he stretches out over the cosmos. He then establishes the constellation of the stars.

In Job 9:8, “treads” means to defeat or subjugate, as in Dt 33:29. The image of the ocean as chaos was already seen in Job 3:8 (there called Leviathan) and in Job 7:12 (there it is put under guard), while in Job 38:8–11 it is shut up behind doors; its limits are set with doors and bars and halted from going any farther. In Ugaritic myths, the god Baal defeats Yamm, the sea. On a stele from Baal’s temple at Ugarit the wavy lines on which the god Baal is standing have been interpreted as the waves of the sea and as the mountains.

All of this demonstrates that the Israelites’ thoughts about the world around them were quite similar to those of all their neighbours,