Proverbs 8:26-27

"While He had not yet made the earth and the fields, Nor the first dust of
the world. When He established the heavens, I was there, When He inscribed a
circle on the face of the deep" (Proverbs 8:26-27 NASB). God's Word shows an
intimate knowledge of this world such as only the Creator could reveal. We
see this in the scientific foreknowledge that is sometimes revealed in it
and this verse is an example. As Wisdom watches the world being made, she
describes the shape of the world as a "circle on the face of the deep." The
Hebrew word for "circle" is "chug" which means "a circle, sphere, used of
the arch or vault of the sky" (Gesenius). This means the Bible describes the
world as round long before man discovered this fact. Until 500 BC, there was
a nearly universal belief in a flat earth (or some other non-round
configuration). Around 500 BC Greek philosophers began to theorize that the
world was round, but the concept was never truly proven until the voyages of
Christopher Columbus (1492 AD) and Magellan (1519-1522 AD). This proverb was
written between (970 and 931 BC) hundreds of years before any in the rest of
the world even began to theorize the earth was round. The Bible contains
similar statements using this word for the world in Isaiah 40:22 (written
around 722 BC) and Job 22:14 (possibly before 1500 BC). The Word of God
describes this world with the accuracy we would expect as a work inspired by
the Creator.

Jeremy Sprouse