As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire.
Job stands in its poetic portion as a real account to be studied as a whole, and this text belongs to Job's answer exalting God's power and wisdom. It lies in the first part of chapter 28, which praises wisdom by describing familiar earthly things that men know more or less about. Out of the surface of the earth comes bread, while under it is turned up as it were fire. Literally beneath it is overturned and as on fire, its under-strata overturned and subverted as by fire.
The earth is a globe about eight thousand miles in diameter and twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, hung upon nothing in space. It turns on its axis once every twenty-four hours and moves in its yearly orbit around the sun at nineteen miles each second. Three-fourths of its surface is vast oceans of water and only about fifty million square miles, or one-fourth, is land, much of it desert or mountainous, unfertile and uninhabitable.
The bosom of the earth is not solid but holds a vast quantity of liquid fire. All of its hidden interior except about twenty or thirty miles of outer surface is an intensely heated mass in molten fluidity, stored in interior cavities and hidden subterranean passages at the very heart of the earth, with the center of the earth a vast fire. It is restless and rolls its fiery waves hither and thither, constantly seeking with terrible expansive power an outlet to spread its fiery elements over the surface and into the atmosphere, and beneath it is Gehenna, hell, the infernos.
On that thin rocky film dwells a fallen, sinful, dying race of over thirteen hundred million souls. They are separated from the mysterious hell of fire just under their feet by a partition that is only one four-hundredth part of the whole diameter of the earth. These subterranean fires produce earthquakes and set the bases and foundations of the mountains on fire in volcanic action. By continued combustion they will eat away the pillars of the globe until the whole fabric of nature is dissolved in flame in the final conflagration, when the fire inside the earth joins fire from heaven to melt the earth into the lake of fire where the wicked receive their doom.
Everything has a place where it may be found, with silver having a vein and gold, iron, brass and copper having places where they are taken and refined. The earth brings forth food above and holds fire-like wealth beneath, which man can search out by cutting channels among the rocks and restraining streams. This skill with earthly treasures sets up the contrast that wisdom has no such earthly mine, cannot be dug out or bought, cannot be found in the sea nor gotten for gold, and no wealth of the world can equal it. God understands the way of wisdom and brings it within man's reach in the truth that the fear of the Lord is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding, which His children learn by walking in the fear of Him.
The description of miners searching the earth's hidden depths for precious things is a picture of diligently studying Scripture by tracing a subject through the Bible to uncover what God has revealed. Bread coming out of the earth proves that God's original plan for man's diet was bloodless, consisting of the pure products of the earth. All physical energy comes primarily from the vegetable kingdom, having been absorbed from the sun and stored in plants for the use of man.
Job stands in its poetic portion as a real account to be studied as a whole, and this text belongs to Job's answer exalting God's power and wisdom. It lies in the first part of chapter 28, which praises wisdom by describing familiar earthly things that men know more or less about. Out of the surface of the earth comes bread, while under it is turned up as it were fire. Literally beneath it is overturned and as on fire, its under-strata overturned and subverted as by fire.
The earth is a globe about eight thousand miles in diameter and twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, hung upon nothing in space. It turns on its axis once every twenty-four hours and moves in its yearly orbit around the sun at nineteen miles each second. Three-fourths of its surface is vast oceans of water and only about fifty million square miles, or one-fourth, is land, much of it desert or mountainous, unfertile and uninhabitable.
The bosom of the earth is not solid but holds a vast quantity of liquid fire. All of its hidden interior except about twenty or thirty miles of outer surface is an intensely heated mass in molten fluidity, stored in interior cavities and hidden subterranean passages at the very heart of the earth, with the center of the earth a vast fire. It is restless and rolls its fiery waves hither and thither, constantly seeking with terrible expansive power an outlet to spread its fiery elements over the surface and into the atmosphere, and beneath it is Gehenna, hell, the infernos.
On that thin rocky film dwells a fallen, sinful, dying race of over thirteen hundred million souls. They are separated from the mysterious hell of fire just under their feet by a partition that is only one four-hundredth part of the whole diameter of the earth. These subterranean fires produce earthquakes and set the bases and foundations of the mountains on fire in volcanic action. By continued combustion they will eat away the pillars of the globe until the whole fabric of nature is dissolved in flame in the final conflagration, when the fire inside the earth joins fire from heaven to melt the earth into the lake of fire where the wicked receive their doom.
Everything has a place where it may be found, with silver having a vein and gold, iron, brass and copper having places where they are taken and refined. The earth brings forth food above and holds fire-like wealth beneath, which man can search out by cutting channels among the rocks and restraining streams. This skill with earthly treasures sets up the contrast that wisdom has no such earthly mine, cannot be dug out or bought, cannot be found in the sea nor gotten for gold, and no wealth of the world can equal it. God understands the way of wisdom and brings it within man's reach in the truth that the fear of the Lord is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding, which His children learn by walking in the fear of Him.
The description of miners searching the earth's hidden depths for precious things is a picture of diligently studying Scripture by tracing a subject through the Bible to uncover what God has revealed. Bread coming out of the earth proves that God's original plan for man's diet was bloodless, consisting of the pure products of the earth. All physical energy comes primarily from the vegetable kingdom, having been absorbed from the sun and stored in plants for the use of man.