Does the earth hang on nothing, or rest on foundations and pillars?

All these verses are poetry, and the same poet uses both pictures within a few lines, so he did not think them contradictory. Job 26:5–14 is a hymn to God’s rule over the whole universe, which ends by saying that all this is only the edge of his works: “Lo, these are parts of his ways” (26:14). ‘Upon nothing’ (Hebrew beli-mah, ‘not anything’) says that nothing holds up the earth except God’s power. The ‘pillars of heaven’ trembling at his rebuke (26:11) are, as Delitzsch explains, the mountains that tower up and seem to hold up the sky, shaking in storm and earthquake.

Job 38 uses a builder’s language (foundations, measuring line, corner stone) in a series of questions meant to show Job that only God knows how the world was made: “declare, if thou hast understanding” (38:4). ‘Foundations’ and ‘pillars’ describe the earth’s stability, much as we still call an argument ‘well founded’, and Job 9:6 pictures an earthquake shaking even those. Hannah’s song is about God raising up the poor; its ‘pillars of the earth’ (Hebrew metsuqim, ‘supports’; the BSB has ‘foundations’) say that the order of the world rests in God’s hands. Neither picture is meant as a scientific description, but both fit what we know: the earth hangs in space with no visible support, and it is stable.

A hint of the earth in space

Some Christians see in Job 26:7 a remarkable anticipation of the earth hanging in space. Delitzsch, while admiring the verse, warned against reading into it laws of the heavens, such as gravitation, that the ancients did not know.