Men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of Yahweh, and from the glory of his majesty, when he arises to shake the earth mightily. to go into the caverns of the rocks, and into the clefts of the ragged rocks, from before the terror of Yahweh, and from the glory of his majesty, when he arises to shake the earth mightily.
A single being standing up can make the entire Earth shake violently.
Geology
25
passages in this field
Show this passage in
The cited passage
What current science says
The most powerful earthquake ever recorded — the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile — registered 9.5 on the Richter scale and released energy equivalent to about 178 billion tons of TNT. It was caused by a subduction zone rupture along 1,000 km of fault line. To replicate that by 'standing up,' a being would need to exert a force roughly equivalent to the entire gravitational binding energy holding a mountain together. Even the heaviest object a human has ever moved (the Troll A offshore platform, 656,000 tons) didn't cause a measurable tremor. Standing up doesn't do it.
What the text says
This comes from Isaiah 2:19, 21. 'When he ariseth to shake terribly the earth' — the text claims that one entity simply standing up triggers a global earthquake.
Three honest ways to read this passage
-
As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
-
As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
-
As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.