Yes, my hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has spread out the heavens. when I call to them, they stand up together.
The Earth sits on permanent foundations, and stars stand at attention when called.
Astronomy
47
passages in this field
Show this passage in
The cited passage
What current science says
Earth has no foundations. It's a sphere of rock and metal orbiting the sun at 107,000 km/h, floating in the vacuum of space, held in orbit purely by gravity. As for a hand 'spanning the heavens' — the observable universe is 93 billion light-years across. A light-year is 9.46 trillion km. That hand would need to be roughly 880 sextillion km wide. And stars don't respond to voice commands — they're plasma balls fusing hydrogen into helium, completely deaf to anything. Sound doesn't even travel through space; it's a vacuum.
What the text says
This comes from Isaiah 48:13. 'Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together' — the Earth is on foundations, a hand spans the universe, and stars respond to voice commands.
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.