The Structure of the World (38.4-7)
4 Where were
you when I founded (יסד) the earth?
Tell me, if you have insight.
5 Who fixed its
dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched the measuring cord (קו) across it?
6 Into what
were its bases (אדן) sunk (טבע),
or who set its capstone (אבן פנה),
7 when all the
stats of the morning rejoiced (רנן) together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
The first
thing this sketch of cosmology has to convey is that the world has not always
been in existence; it once was brought into being, as a creation. And not just
by a single act of creation: the world was in fact built as a house is built.
In the text, the first act mentioned is its ‘founding’ (יסד, v. 4), but that
cannot have been the very first thing that was done. The measuring of its plan
must have preceded that, so יסד must be a headline word for the whole building
project.
The first task
of the divine builder was to mark out the floor plan for the building with a
tape measure or measuring line, a cord (קו, v. 5). Only then could the
actual work of constructing begin. The construction itself must of course start
with the digging of foundations, into which pillars were set. You must
realize that the earth is supported by pillars, which are not explicitly
mentioned here, though they are in four other places: Job 9.6; Ps. 75.3 (4)
(the term is עמוד), 1 Sam. 2.8 (מצוק), and Ps. 104.5 (מכון). They are of course
completely different from the pillars of heaven (Job 26.11; cf. 2 Sam. 22.8),
which stand on the earth, supporting the sky, . . . .
These pillars
of the earth need bases (אדן) at their foot, which are sunk (טבע)
into some matter that Job apparently doesn’t know about (‘into what were its
bases sunk?’, v. 6), but which may be the underworld sea. ‘Bases’ are usually
metal supports for pillars, which of course extend below the surface of what
the pillars appear to be resting on. You have to dig to make a hole for a base.
That is why I said that digging was the beginning of the construction.
Fast
forwarding, we move in v.5 from the excavation for the bases of the earth in
the first colon to the last phase in the second colon: the completion of the
building. The last item of all in a structure is the capstone (אֶ֣בֶן פִּנָּתָֽהּ),
or keystone, a wedge-shaped stone at the apex of an arch or a round
stone at the apex of a vault; it is the last piece fitted, and it serves to
lock all the stones in position. This term is usually misunderstood by
commentators and translations as ‘cornerstone’. Not so, for in building
generally, each course has its own cornerstones, one at each corner of a
building, and these cornerstones are the first stones to be laid for its
course; the other stones are lined up by reference to them. A building has not
one but many cornerstones, but only one capstone or top stone. When that is set
in place, the building is finished. The sequel in v.7 confirms that the
building work has been completed, for the shouts of rejoicing by the morning
stars Venus and Mercury and, in the second colon, by all the stars (‘sons
of God’) would be premature before that. Sad to say, incidentally, there does
not appear to have been any music at the celebration, despite the famous lines
of Milton:
Such music (as
‘tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator great
his constellations set,
And the well-ballanc’t world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And id the welt’ring waves their oozy channel keep,
and despite
the singing in the RSV, and most modern translations (‘the joyful concern of
the morning stars’ in the NJB), since רנן means only ‘shout’, not ‘sing’, no
Miltonian hinges either, for that matter.
Please notice
that while we can identify the pillars of the earth and their bases and the matter
into which they are sunk as elements of the standard cosmological picture in
the Hebrew Bible, there is nothing we know of in Hebrew cosmology to which the capstone
corresponds. It must simply be an extension of the metaphor of building. (David
J. A. Clines, “One or Two Things You May Now Know about the Universe: The
Cosmology of the Divine Speeches in Job,” in Joban Papers [Hebrew Bible
Monographs 102; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2023], 328-29, 330-31)